


Safe Harbor

by aceofhearts61



Category: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990s Movies), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Bay Movies), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - All Media Types
Genre: Alternative Lifestyles, Alternative Sexuality, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Arguing, Asexuality Spectrum, Assassination, BAMF!Donatello, BAMF!Leonardo, BAMF!Mikey, BAMF!Raphael, Bickering, Brotherly Affection, Brotherly Bonding, Brotherly Love, Childhood Memories, Comfort, Crime Fighting, Cuddle Pile, Cuddling & Snuggling, Date Rape Drug/Roofies, Decapitation, Domestic, Domestic Fluff, Dreams, Emotional Conversations, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Explicit Language, Family, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Father-Son Relationship, Fights, Forehead Kisses, Friendship, Gen, Heart-to-Heart, Heroism, Hugging, Hugs, Human Trafficking, I Love You, Introspective!Raphael, Leo Has Abandonment Issues, Love, Male-Female Friendship, Meditation, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Original Character(s), Panic Attacks, Permanent Singlehood, Platonic Cuddling, Platonic Life Partners, Platonic Relationships, Prostitution, Relationship Negotiation, Rescue Missions, Romantic Friendship, Sex Trafficking, Sharing a Bed, Skateboarding, Sleeping Together, Social theory, Soul to Soul Contact, Sparring, Touching, Vigilantism, Violence, Yoga, mentions of rape/non-con, spiritual contact, star-gazing, talking about feelings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-06-09
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:01:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 43,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23443642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aceofhearts61/pseuds/aceofhearts61
Summary: The brothers begin to re-think their relationships with each other, after questioning who they are as social beings.A new, dangerous mission presents itself to their team--one that will affect them in ways nothing else has before.
Relationships: Donatello & Leonardo & Michelangelo & Raphael (TMNT)
Comments: 20
Kudos: 67





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Just re-discovered my love of TMNT, specifically the live action universe of the 90s. 
> 
> This fic is going to be heavily based on the 90s Turtles, perhaps with some of the Michael Bay characterization thrown in. We'll see. 
> 
> April and Casey are definitely the ones from the 1990 film!
> 
> Reviews, as always, are warmly welcome.

New York City

2005

* * *

It’s one of those mornings where Donnie is the first one up, so he starts making breakfast for himself and his brothers, according to the silent agreement the four of them reached years ago where the first turtle in the kitchen is on cooking duty. It’s after seven, and Donnie is only awake because he went to bed early last night, lulled to sleep by the movie he and his brothers watched together. Despite being in the habit of going to bed late and sleeping in late, Donnie does enjoy waking up early and having the lair to himself, before the rest of his family joins him. It doesn’t happen often, but he relishes the quiet when it does.

Leo comes out not long after Donnie starts scrambling the eggs. The two brothers nod at each other, and Leo heads for the couch in front of the TV, switching to the channel ahead of the first local news broadcast of the day. April’s typically on the morning news.

“Sleep well?” Donnie says.

“Not bad,” says Leo, looking from his brother to the car dealership commercial and back again. He’s got one arm outstretched on the back of the sofa behind him. “You?”

“Yeah, I slept all right. Had some weird dreams—but that’s pretty typical.” Donnie looks over his shoulder at Leo, who’s watching the television. He’s had the faintest feeling the last couple weeks that Leo’s anxiety has been on the upswing, though he doesn’t have any specific evidence to prove it. It’s just his intuition telling him so, at this point. Leo’s never really spoken of his anxiety to his brothers, but Donatello’s been aware of it since they were teens. One tell-tale sign is Leo having trouble sleeping.

“Just weird?” says Leo, eyes trained on the TV. “Not bad?”

Donnie recognizes the concern and appreciates it. “No, not bad,” he says. “I don’t even remember them now. The bad ones always stick with you.”

Leo doesn’t respond, and Donnie wonders about his eldest brother’s bad dreams. He slaps a whole packet of bacon on to the griddle, then goes back to moving the frozen potatoes around their skillet. Donnie and Leo have always been able to share comfortable silences, and it’s one thing Donnie likes about their relationship. But sometimes, those silences do leave him wondering what Leo may be keeping from him.

April comes on the screen and begins talking about sex trafficking in New York City. Donnie listens to the first couple minutes of her report, before tuning it out. He’s been aware of the topic for a few years, at least, but it’s not one he wants to think about.

He glances at Leo, noticing his older brother’s absorption in April’s newscast. “Have you seen Mikey today?” he says.

“No,” Leo says absently. His eyes never leave the screen, and the expression on his face, which Donnie can only see part of, is one of Leo-like focus. The kind that makes him forget the whole world.

Donnie’s not even sure his brother heard him. He continues stirring the potatoes in their skillet and switches off the burner heating the eggs. He’s perfectly aware of what April’s saying on TV, but he doesn’t want to pay too much attention to the details. The story is too gruesome. Satisfied with the crispness of the bacon, Donnie turns off that skillet and wonders about his youngest brother.

Mikey wanders into the kitchen as if he knew Donnie was thinking about him. Donnie senses immediately that something is off with him. He’s not his usual cheerful, talkative, rambunctious self. He’s quiet and calm, the way Leo typically is. He sits down at the table without saying a word.

“Mikey?” Donnie says.

“Yeah, I’m here,” Mikey replies, barely looking at him.

Donnie steps up to the table. “You okay?”

Mikey nods. “Fine, bro. Hungry.”

“Breakfast is ready,” Donnie says and returns to the stove after a moment of hesitation. He takes four plates out of a cabinet above the kitchen counter and fixes Mikey his plate first.

Mikey thanks him and starts eating, but it’s clear to Donnie that he’s lost in a thought to a degree uncharacteristic for the youngest turtle.

“Leo?” Donnie says. “You gonna eat?”

“Yeah,” says Leo, still engrossed in April’s report. He’s watching a montage of film footage depicting alleyways, street corners, and clubs in the city, April’s voiceover explaining that these sex traffickers target young women and underage girls in these locations and usually employ manipulative rhetoric to con their targets into speaking with them or physically going with them to a secondary location.

Donnie’s eyes linger on Leo, before he turns away and fixes a second plate. He brings that plate to his brother who sits unmoving on the couch, and Leo takes it, shoveling the food into his mouth without even looking at it.

Donnie fixes his own plate next and leaves Raph’s portions in the pans to prevent them from cooling before Raph shows up. Donnie sits at the table across from Mikey and waits for his little brother to explain what’s on his mind.

“Hey, Donnie,” Mikey says after a few minutes.

“Yeah?” says Donnie, trying not to sound over-eager.

“Do you wish you could have a wife?”

Donnie blinks at his brother, utterly surprised by the question.

“Or a girlfriend?” Mikey adds. “Like, do you feel bad about not having one? Like you can never be fully happy without one?”

Donnie takes a while to answer, as his mind scrambles to process the question. “Uh,” he starts. “I—I guess not, Mikey. I don’t think about it, really. I did when we were teenagers, but…. Not in a long time. Do—do you feel bad about being single?”

Mikey doesn’t answer him immediately. He’s staring into space, not looking at his brother, with a weirdly serious expression on his face. “No,” he says. “I don’t feel bad. I’m okay with it. I just—I don’t know, man. Is that because I’m a turtle instead of human? Like, am I supposed to feel bad about being single? Am I supposed to be sexually frustrated?”

Raph appears behind Mikey, making his way to the stove and that last plate on the counter. “What’s it matter, bro?” he says. “No human’s going to hook up with us. Guess it’d be kinda weird if one did.”

He slides the last of the eggs, potatoes, and bacon on his plate and sits down at the table with his brothers. He glances at Leo, who ignores the kitchen.

Donnie looks at Mikey quietly, then at Raph, then at his plate. “Mikey, if you have questions about the potential biological explanations for your feelings on coupling and sex, I can do my best to find answers. I just need some time to do the research.”

Raph eats, more interested in Leo than in the conversation between Donnie and Mikey. “What’s up with him?” he says to his younger brothers, cocking his head toward Leo.

Donnie looks at Leo, then at Raph. “Fascinated by April’s report, I guess,” he replies.

Leo gets up from the couch, takes his empty plate to the sink, and heads straight for Master Splinter’s room without a word.

“Good morning to you too,” Raph says under his breath. 

* * *

It’s been years since Donnie read the book about turtles he found in Master Splinter’s personal library, and he returns to it only to look for the section on social behavior and mating practices. He supplements the book with a quick internet search. He remembered correctly: turtles do not pair-bond, nor do they form family units. Neither male nor female turtles take an active parenting role over their young. Turtles only have sex for the purpose of reproduction, and males and females stay away from each other apart from mating season. He can’t find any information on homosexual behavior in turtles, though he’s aware several species display it in the animal kingdom.

The first time Donnie read about turtle social behavior, he was fifteen and felt strangely let down by the information. Ordinary, wild turtles didn’t act anything like him and his brothers. He knew he and his brothers and Master Splinter were different, were part human in a way, but he had never seen anything human about himself in the mirror. He was expecting to relate more to turtles than people, but the most important behavioral area in animal existence left him feeling utterly un-turtle-like. He couldn’t imagine living his whole life alone, without any meaningful relationships—without his brothers and his father. He still can’t.

Donnie sets the book on turtles aside and leaves his lab for the dojo, hoping it’s empty. Usually, Leo is in there because he lives and breathes training, but fortunately, he’s not in the dojo now. No one is. Donnie takes his bo from the wall and moves to the center of the mat, beginning in the traditional first pose preceding every kata regardless of weapon. He takes a breath, then begins one of the kata he likes using as a warm-up.

Donnie is no stranger to alienation. None of the turtles are. Now thirty years old, they’re accustomed to who they are and how they live, comfortable with themselves in a way they weren’t as teenagers or even early twenty-something’s. So much has happened, they’ve been through more stress and life-or-death situations than most of the human population will ever face, and the very basic question of their “normalcy,” their nature, their value as living things was more or less resolved years ago. Donnie certainly doesn’t wish he was human, though he was curious as a teen.

But Mikey raised an important question—a fascinating one. Are they supposed to long for romantic relationships? Are they supposed to agonize over their singlehood, the way humans always do in movies and TV shows? Should they be tortured by the lack of partnered sex?

The real question is: if the way they live doesn’t bother them, does it mean they’re truly the kind of creatures that humans consider beneath them?

Well, they’re not human. Never have been, never will be. It would be silly to expect their every feeling, desire, impulse, and behavior to match humans. Yet they don’t act entirely like unmutated turtles either.

Donnie twirls his bo around him, strikes an invisible enemy, turns around, spins the bo, strikes again. Out of all his brothers, his ninja skills are the least flashy, but Master Splinter has reminded him many times that he is just as deadly as they are, that he is one of the most skilled fighters with a bo in the world. Donnie feels as if he’s never been as identified with his weapons, his ninja status, as his brothers. He sees the bo as a tool, no different than all the tools in his lab, and he’s mastered it for the sake of doing his part on the team. But he knows this isn’t who he is—at least not entirely.

He somersaults on the ground and springs back on his feet, thrusting the bo forward into another invisible opponent. He’s not thinking of the kata at all, performing it solely from muscle memory.

Donnie was never sure whether he had a crush on April as a teen or not. Mikey seemed to be attracted to her, but there was no angst behind it. Donnie wonders now if it truly was sexual attraction Mikey felt for her or if it was more an aesthetic attraction combined with a teenage turtle fascination with the first human woman any of them had ever known personally. Mikey’s been a big fan novels most of his life and used to consume those cheap, trashy Harlequin books when they were teens—Donnie suspects they may have had an influence on his brother back then. But now?

None of them, as far as Donnie knows, are devoid of a sex drive. But none of them have displayed frustration at being unable to have sex with other creatures. Donnie himself is quite satisfied masturbating and finds that now, he only needs to do it a couple times a month. He’s sure he doesn’t know what lust truly feels like, based on everything he’s read and watched over the years. If he was identical to an ordinary turtle—if any of his brothers were—the impulse to copulate with another animal would be overwhelming to the point of near uncontrollability. The idea of being brought to his knees by a physical urge like that, even to the point of forcing himself onto another living thing, makes Donnie shudder.

But sex and romantic love are two different things. His ordinary turtle relatives prove that much. Romantic love doesn’t exist for them. Their sexual activities are purely reproductive in nature. Humans, on the other hand…. Humans usually treat falling in love with a mate like the pinnacle of their emotional experience, aside from reproducing. They fuse that love with sex, with few exceptions, and they don’t seem to feel half as much emotion in their other relationships as they do in those couple ones. That always struck Donnie as weird. In fact, most of human social behavior is weird to him, now that he’s thinking about it.

Separating from your siblings so early in life and only seeing them a few times a year? Raising offspring apart from them? Living only with a mate and seeking out the lion’s share of your physical and emotional needs from that mate?

Donnie can’t imagine how anyone gets by like that. He’s watched April and Casey over the years, as they progressed from dating to living together to marriage, and in the back of his mind, he always wondered how they could be happy with their arrangement, in the absence of family or friends who were the equivalent. He doesn’t think he could be happy without his brothers living with him, sharing everything with him.

Is that what Mikey’s getting at?

* * *

“Father,” Leo says, when he enters Splinter’s room.

The rat’s ears perk up at that. Leo addresses him as father only in certain situations, usually ones involving his son’s emotions. Splinter turns toward his eldest, watering can still in hand and some of his plants behind him. “Good morning, Leonardo,” he says. “Is everything all right?”

Leo bows. “Yes,” he says. “But I have something important I need to discuss.”

The turtle crosses the distance between himself and Splinter and folds his legs beneath him to sit on the floor, hands on his thighs. The pose signals to Splinter that whatever’s on his son’s mind is truly serious. Splinter puts down the watering can.

“April gave a report just now,” Leo starts. “On sex trafficking in the city. Young women and underage girls disappearing… Presumed to be… Taken. Taken and sold out there for…”

He can’t say it out loud, but Splinter knows exactly what he’s talking about. The rat bows his head a little. He’s been aware for quite some time what humans do to each other when it comes to sex. He assumed—though maybe he’s only just now realizing he assumed all these years—that his sons knew too.

But Leo is rattled in a way he hardly ever is.

“She made it sound like the people responsible for these crimes operate in some kind of network,” Leo continues. “Like the Foot clan. I got the feeling she was holding back, not sharing everything she knows.”

Splinter folds his hands and looks at his son. “Leonardo,” he says. “What are you asking me?”

Leo drops his gaze from Splinter’s face and goes quiet for a moment, as if trying to decide what he wants. “All this time, I thought missing persons were either dead or had run away to start a new life…. I never thought they might be…. That they might be prisoners somewhere, used for those…. evil purposes.”

He lifts his eyes to look at his father again, and now, there is that cold, steely glint Splinter knows well. The look of a warrior whose wrath has been provoked.

“You have yet to ask your question,” Splinter says.

“Shouldn’t we do something?” says Leonardo. “Shouldn’t we find a way to wipe out the men responsible for these crimes altogether?”

The second question is heroic to the point of innocence, and it reminds Splinter of teenage Leonardo. He doesn’t have the heart to say that the turtles could never eliminate sex trafficking in New York, even if they spent the rest of their lives trying and had the entire NYPD at their disposal.

“It is not my place to tell you what you should do in this case,” Splinter says. “What do you want to do?”

Leonardo purses his lips. “I want to take out as many of those traffickers as I can.”

Splinter hangs his head now. “Leonardo—your intentions are noble, but I fear this mission is not one you can ever win. And it is dangerous. More dangerous than you know. Perhaps one of the most dangerous missions you could ever engage in. The risk to yourself and your brothers would be great. And for so little reward…. I fear that even if you pursue this mission and escape unscathed, you will have your heart broken and your morale shattered.”

Leonardo’s face contorts in confusion and surprise.

“You cannot solve this problem permanently, my son,” Splinter adds. “Not even with the help of your brothers. You can only decide to walk away when you’ve had enough.”

Leonardo’s expression clears with understanding and disappointment, just a touch of disbelief that his father can respect in a young man. Leonardo bows his head.

“Tell me what to do, Master,” he says.

Splinter smiles just a little. “You are an adult, Leonardo. I cannot command you. I can only give you the same advice I’ve tried to impart all your life: search your own heart, meditate on the question until your own wisdom is revealed to you, and consult your brothers. Each one of you must decide for himself, but always remember you are strongest as one.”

Leo lifts his eyes to peer at his aging father and gives the rat a respectful nod.

* * *

When Raphael swoops down onto her building’s rooftop, April is already there, waiting for him. She’s smoking a cigarette, something she only does when she’s had a hard day or when she’s under a significant amount of stress. It’s a bad habit she picked up from Casey in the 90s, and Raph wishes she would quit the way Casey has. But he never nags her about it. Not his style.

“Hey,” she says, smiling at him with a tired face but genuine warmth in her eyes.

“Hey,” says Raph, nearing her. “Thanks for meeting me this late.”

“No problem. Everything all right?”

Raph nods. It’s not often he asks to see her in person alone, and when he does, it’s always to discuss a sensitive subject he doesn’t want his brothers knowing about. He looks away, nervous about asking her what he wants.

He starts somewhere else: “That story of yours this morning…. Pretty dark stuff.”

“Yeah, you could say that again,” April replies, taking a drag on her cigarette. “Stuff of nightmares. The women I interviewed over the last few weeks…. Well. Suffice to say, I’ve lost plenty of sleep over this story.”

Raph grimaces at her. “Now what?” he says.

April shakes her head. “I don’t know. We’ll see what kind of response the story gets over the next week, and if it’s strong, then I might keep pursuing it.”

“Do you want to?”

April meets his gaze. When he was younger, Raphael wouldn’t have had the emotional intelligence to ask a question like that, but he’s matured a lot since he first rescued her in a subway fifteen years ago. It still takes April by surprise sometimes.

“I don’t know,” she says, because that’s the truth.

“Well, I won’t blame you if you decide to move on,” Raph says.

“Is that what you came here to talk to me about? My story?”

Raphael shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “Not exactly.”

She looks at him with renewed interest now, more alert, tracking him as he starts to pace. He’s quiet for a long time, but she doesn’t prod him, knowing he’ll speak when he’s ready.

“You ever meet anybody—any humans—who don’t do the whole married-with-kids thing?” Raph says. “Because they don’t want to?”

There’s a strange quality in his eyes when he asks the question. It’s hope, she realizes.

“Uh—I don’t know. I can’t think of anyone off the top of my head, but I know there are people who don’t get married. It’s rare, I guess. But I’m sure there are some people out there who like being single.”

Raph keeps pacing. He looks troubled, tense.

“Why do you ask?” April says, surprised by the turtle’s question.

“Mikey brought it up this morning,” he says. “He was wondering if we’re supposed to be upset because we’re never going to have that kind of life. I don’t think he’s actually upset about it….. But it’s like he realized that it might be weird if we’re okay with it or something? I don’t know.”

“Well, what do you think? Are you upset? Do you wish you could…. Have a girlfriend?”

“Not really. I don’t think about it, you know. There’s always more important shit to think about. And like I told Mikey, it doesn’t matter how we feel about it because there ain’t nothing we can do to change the situation. We’re turtles. Humans are never going to want us like that. I’m not even sure it’s right for us to want to hook up with them, if any of us do. I mean, that would be weird, right? Wanting to do the do with a different species?”

April half-smiles and says, “I should really have a glass of wine for this conversation.”

“Sorry,” says Raphael. “This is stupid, I shouldn’t have let Mikey get in my head.”

“It’s okay. You can always come to me about stuff like this. What are human friends for, right?”

Raph gives her a smile.

April crushes her cigarette butt under her heel and gets up from her seat, approaching the big turtle. She lays her hands on his bulging upper arms and looks at him with kindness. “Raph, the only thing that matters is that you’re happy and at peace and doing what you want to do. You don’t have to be like anybody else. You already know that. And if you don’t like the way things are…. Then try to change them.” 

Raphael nods, feeling soothed enough despite the lack of concrete answers.

“And when all else fails, talk to your brothers,” April adds. “They’re the ones you should compare yourself to, not people.”

* * *

The next morning, Leo is the first to rise, and he begins his day with an hour-long meditation in the little room that Master Splinter set aside for just that purpose. He tries his best to keep his mind quiet and clear, and when the question of his potential mission arises, he tries to listen to his heart, which really means listening to his body.

Once he opens his eyes, he knows what his decision is—but deciding was only step one.

Leo emerges from the meditation room and heads for the kitchen, assuming he’ll be on breakfast duty today. But he finds Donnie sitting at the table, sipping on hot tea and thinking. Which is not like Donnie at all. Undistracted thinking is Leo’s territory. Donnie’s always got his attention on something outside of himself, usually an experiment or scientific research.

“Hey,” Leo says, keeping his voice down, so only Donnie can hear him.

“Morning,” says Donnie. “Were you meditating?”

Leo nods and rests his hands on the back of the empty chair across from his brother. “Got any more water in that kettle for me?”

“Yeah, there’s plenty.”

“Cool.” Leo moves to the kitchen counter, takes a clean mug out of the cupboard, picks a green tea bag from the family tea collection, and pours the water into the mug. Many of the most important conversations he had with his father growing up were had over hot tea. Leo drinks it more than any of his brothers to this day.

He sits across from Donnie at the table and warms his hands around the mug, waiting until it feels right to speak. “What’s on your mind, Don?”

Donnie’s eyes meet his brother’s. “I could ask you the same question.”

Leo lifts one corner of his mouth. Donnie’s always been the most perceptive of his three brothers. They’re more similar in temperament than either one is to Raph or Mikey, which has always made it easy for them to communicate despite their differences.

“I’ll start if you want me to,” Leo says.

Donnie gives him the gentlest of nods, watching his big brother as if Leo is the only thing in the world.

“I’ve been reflecting on April’s report,” Leo begins. “I haven’t been able to think about anything else. I spoke to Master Splinter about it yesterday…. He wouldn’t tell me what to do. He said I should decide for myself, then talk to you and the others.”

“Talk to us…. About what?” says Donnie.

Leo looks up at him, feeling the weight of his decision. “I want to go after the traffickers. I want to save as many women as I can, and I want to avenge the victims.”

Donnie’s eyes shine and widen. He’s speechless. He never would’ve thought Leo would suggest anything of the kind, based solely on a news report.

“I know I don’t…. usually decide on something like this so quickly,” Leo says, staring into his tea. “But I feel different, Don. This feels different. It feels like…. A calling. I don’t think I can resist.”

“Leo—” Donnie says, the gears in his mind racing. “What you’re talking about is…. I wouldn’t even know where to start. And it would be super dangerous, I mean—the men you’re talking about hunting are the worst people on earth.”

“I know.” Leo meets his brother’s gaze, and he’s got that look in his eyes. The one Donnie knows means his leader is out for blood. “Master Splinter warned me. And he’s right. This mission would be incredibly dangerous—and hard. Maybe harder than I can imagine…. Which is why I’m not asking you or Raph or Mikey to do it with me. I’ll take your help if you want to give it to me, but if you don’t, I understand. Just because I feel this calling doesn’t mean you will too.”

Donnie sits there with his mouth open for a second. “Leo, you can’t do something like this alone. You would get killed or worse, captured…. I don’t even want to think….”

But he does. And Leo’s thought of it too. If he or his brothers were ever captured by men in the trafficking industry, they would meet a fate far worse than the experimentation and imprisonment they’ve feared from the government all their lives. The fate of the victims he wants to help.

“I need to do this, Donnie,” Leo says, after drinking some of his tea. “I need to at least try. But I don’t want to drag you and the others into it if you’re scared or if you think it’s a bad idea. Each of you should think about it the way I have and decide. I won’t be offended if you decide to sit this one out.”

Donnie’s hand darts across the table and grips Leo’s arm tight, startling the older turtle.

“Leonardo,” Donnie says, giving his brother one of the most intense looks Leo has ever seen from him. “You will not perform this mission alone. I won’t let you. Neither will Raph or Mikey. If we decide we don’t want to do it, you’re not going either.”

Leo could retort that he’s an adult and the leader of their team and can do whatever he pleases, but the way his brother’s looking at him tells him two things: Donnie is willing to physically fight him to stop him if necessary, and Donnie is terrified of Leo going on the mission alone.

So Leo just looks at his brother and nods.

Donnie lets him go and seems to calm down again. “I’ll support you,” he says. “I won’t tell Raph and Mikey what call to make, but I’ll vote in favor of this mission because I can see how much it means to you.”

Leo smiles. “Thank you,” he says.

Donnie sips at his tea, his cheeks hot from the spike in adrenaline he just felt. “I can’t believe you would consider doing something that dangerous by yourself,” he says, so quiet that Leo can only just hear him.

Leo feels a twinge of guilt for scaring his brother, so decides to finally change the subject. “It’s your turn. Tell me what you were thinking about.”

Donatello glances up at Leo, as if unwilling to move on from his brother’s slight so easily. But he relents. “I was thinking about how to answer Mikey’s questions concerning our social and sexual nature,” he says.

“What?” Leo replies. “What questions?”

“You were too focused on April’s report yesterday to hear him, I guess. He asked if we’re supposed to be unhappy about never having romantic relationships. I think maybe he was trying to ask why he’s not upset about it, as if there might be something wrong with him, with us, for being at peace with it.”

“Where did that come from?”

“I don’t know,” says Donnie. “But he’d obviously been thinking about seriously. The answer matters to him.”

“Why?” says Leo. “If we accept our lives the way they are, why should we question that acceptance? That’s just looking for unhappiness.”

“I don’t know why, and I don’t think it matters. He asked me a question, and I’m trying to come up with an answer.”

“So do you have it yet?”

Donnie’s quiet for a moment, then says, “Turtles don’t pair bond the way humans do. They don’t even raise their offspring. They don’t form families, they just—have sex and reproduce. Humans are the exact opposite: highly social, family-oriented, and geared toward long-term romantic relationships with sexual partners. We seem to fall somewhere in between. Emotionally, we’re far more human than turtle, but sexually, we’re more turtle-like, I guess. Although, we haven’t displayed sexual frustration at our lack of suitable mates…. So it’s almost like we’re asexual, but we do have sex drives….”

“I’m not seeing an answer in that info dump,” says Leo, affectionate amusement in his voice.

“If none of us feel an overwhelming urge to pair bond with a sexual partner, it’s probably because we’re turtles,” Donnie says. “If we don’t experience a desire to have sex with other beings, despite our libidos, that could be an effect of the mutagen. The point is, we’re not human—so it makes sense that our social behaviors and drives are different from most humans.”

“Donnie, I don’t think that’s what Mikey wants to hear….”

“What do you mean?”

Leo pauses and drinks more of his tea. “I think he wants to know if it’s okay to be the way he is. The way we are.”

“That—doesn’t make any sense. Okay according to who? Humans probably wouldn’t think it’s okay, but we’re already not normal in their eyes, so….”

Leo searches his own mind for a way to put into words what he senses in Mikey. “Maybe he’s afraid that not wanting a life mate or a girlfriend or whatever means that…. He’s heartless. I know that sounds ridiculous, uh…. Emotionally incomplete or defective. Something like that.”

Donnie blinks at his older brother. “That’s ridiculous,” he says.

Leo shrugs.

Donnie sighs and rubs at his forehead.

“That’s really what’s got you so quiet?” Leo says.

Donnie looks at him again. He considers trying to put into words what he’s feeling, but he doesn’t think it would go well right now. He hasn’t finished processing. “I’m just thinking about our social behavior a lot,” he says. “When I’m done, I’ll let you know.”

Leo nods.

* * *

After dinner, Leo calls a turtle meeting in the dojo. He and his brothers sit in a circle on the floor, something they haven’t done since they were kids, and Leo can tell Raph and Mikey are uneasy in anticipation of whatever he’s got to say. They both figure Splinter already knows about the subject, or else Leo would’ve called a family meeting to include their father. Neither one notices Donnie’s lack of suspicious energy.

Leo takes a deep breath before he starts, his shoulders tense. “I have a mission I want to take on,” he says. “I have Master’s blessing to make my own decision, and so do you. This mission isn’t like anything we’ve done before…. So I think you all have to think about it carefully before you decide whether you want to go for it. Don’t give me your final answer now. Sleep on it.”

“Leo, are we ever going to find out what the mission is?” says Raph.

Leo doesn’t quite roll his eyes at his brother, who’s sitting directly across from him. “You all heard April’s report yesterday morning, right?” he says.

Donnie nods.

Mikey looks at all his brothers in confusion.

Raph says, “Yeah, about the city’s sex trafficking problem.”

“Right,” says Leo. “Well—I want to go after the bastards involved. I want to rescue as many of their targets as I can, ideally before those targets become victims. And if I can trace the connection between victims and their original traffickers, I want to punish those traffickers…. And I don’t mean turn them into the cops.”

Raph holds Leo’s gaze, while Donnie surveys the faces of all his brothers and Mikey gawks at Leo.

“I know getting involved in that world is dangerous,” Leo continues. “Which is why I’m willing to pursue this mission without you, if you don’t want to get involved. I won’t blame you if you say no.”

“You’re not going alone,” Donnie says softly, at Leo’s right.

“You’re fucking insane if you think I’d ever let you go up against people like that without backup,” Raph tells Leo, a hard edge to his voice. “I’ll chain you to your bed the rest of your life if that’s what I have to do to stop you.”

“Dude,” Mikey says at Leo, his expression a mix of awe, disbelief, and a tinge of indignation.

Leo remains unruffled. “I need to do this,” he says, not wanting to fight over it. “I can feel it in my gut, this—calling. This is more important than anything we’ve ever done.”

“How would you even start?” Raph demands. “And when would it end?”

“I don’t know.”

Raph rocks forward and backward but remains seated. “You’re talking about murder with no end in sight, Leo. You think you can handle that? Because I don’t think you can. And you wouldn’t even get to save anyone probably. You’d just be vindicating people who are already lost.”

“Maybe you don’t care enough about the victims to do something about what’s happening, Raph, but I do,” Leo replies, raising his voice just a hair. “I can’t just go on living my life pretending that this city is safe when it’s not, letting who knows how many women and children be destroyed….”

When they were younger, Raphael would’ve taken his brother’s bait and flew into a rage, but he’s developed enough self-control to see through Leo’s tactic. He keeps his voice low—the kind of pitch that sounds dangerous coming from any of the turtles. “You’re smart enough to know the risks this family would face if we accepted this mission,” he says.

That blunts Leo’s energy. His eyes soften. “I know what’s at stake,” he says. “That’s why I’m giving you each the option of sitting this out.”

“Letting you do this alone isn’t an option for us, Leo,” says Donnie. “It’s all of us or none of us.”

“Are you sure about this?” Mikey says to Leo. “This is like…. dark to the max, bro.”

Leo looks at his youngest brother and doesn’t answer. Mikey can see in his eyes that he’s already made up his mind.

Leo faces Raph again, glances at Donnie. “I don’t want to drag you down this path if you’re not serious about the mission. So if you all vote against it…. I’ll try to put it out of my mind.”

The eldest turtle gets to his feet and leaves the circle, heading for the door.

“Leo,” Raph calls.

Leo stops and turns around, seeing his three brothers on their feet.

“We’re in,” says Raph. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Clearly, this fic has got its hooks in me, because this chapter is LONG and already here soon after the first one!
> 
> Hope you like it. If you do, please leave a review; a good review always makes me happy.

In the morning, the brothers gather around the kitchen table before their father awakens, with a spread they all helped put together: coffee, tea, fruit, eggs, sausage patties, hash browns, toast, butter, and jam.

“So, we’re really doing it,” Leo starts, when they’ve all settled into their seats and started eating.

His three brothers nod as he searches their faces.

“But only if we can agree on ground rules that make sense,” says Donnie.

Leo’s not surprised by that. He was starting to think of those rules himself.

Donnie reaches into the center of the table and hits the “record” button on the voice recorder he placed there. “Once we’ve got the rules down, I’ll put them in writing, so we can easily refer back to the list. Leo, if you don’t mind, I’ll start.”

Leo raises his eye ridges a little bit. He should’ve known Donnie would already have at least one rule in his head.

“Rule number one,” says Donnie. “We only go after traffickers as a team. All four of us have to be present on every single operation involving direct contact with them.”

He’s looking right at Leo when he says it.

“Hell, yes,” says Raph. “Leo, I swear to god, if you ever try to pull some lone hero crap, I will knock you out.”

Leo holds up his hands. “I was never trying to do this alone,” he says, looking at all his brothers. “I’m fine with the rule. You got any other ideas, Donnie?” ‘

Donnie hesitates for just a second, but Leo senses it.

“If any of us even comes close to being captured,” Donnie says, “the mission is over. Permanently.”

Leo tenses at that. Capture is always a risk for them, no matter what kind of mission they go on. They’ve been captured many times in the last fifteen years and probably will be again.

Raph and Mikey both look at Leo, as Donnie holds the eldest turtle’s gaze.

“You know I’m not a fan of retreat and surrender,” Raph says to Leo. “But I side with Don on this one. Getting captured by these pricks would be worse than death.”

Leo looks at Donnie. “Define close,” he says.

“If it’s clear the guys we’re fighting intend to snatch one of us into a vehicle or a cage, rather than kill us on the spot,” says Donnie.

“I want to add something to this rule,” says Raph. “If it’s looking like one of us is about to get captured, we shift priorities and throw everything we got into saving our brother. Even if it means the bad guys get away. Even if they take their victim with them.”

“That’s the perfect segue to my next rule,” Donnie answers. “Which is: if anything goes wrong on an operation, we get out immediately, even if we have to leave a victim behind.”

Leo feels torn between knowing his brothers’ rules make sense and hating the idea of abandoning a victim. He sits in silence, openly displeased.

“Guys, you know I’m no coward,” says Mikey. “But I am literally so spooked when I think about any one of us getting thrown into the back of a van by these people.”

Donnie looks at him. His brother’s naked facial expression and open verbal admission of fear is so Mikey, it sends a tender feeling through Donnie’s heart. “Me too,” he says, his voice quiet.

Leo finally nods. “Okay,” he says. “I can agree to those rules. Now, listen to mine: we don’t leave behind any witnesses when we attack traffickers.”

Mikey shivers.

But nobody objects.

“We’ll have a follow-up meeting after every single operation,” Leo continues. “So that we can check in with each other and review how the rescue or attack went.”

“I have a rule that’s related to that,” says Donnie. “We have to communicate with each other openly about everything related to this mission, including what we’re thinking and feeling after an operation.”

Raph sighs, still the brother who’s least willing to talk about his feelings.

“Agreed,” Leo replies. “No secrets. If anybody starts keeping secrets about anything related to this mission, it’s off.”

Donnie gives his brother a curt nod.

“I’ve got one,” says Mikey.

All of his brothers look at him.

“If the mission starts to damage any of us mentally…. We stop.”

“Sounds like a good idea,” says Raph.

“Okay,” Leo says. “Is that it?”

The four turtles all look around the table at each other.

Donnie turns off the voice recorder.

“I’ll set up a meeting with April,” Leo tells his brothers. “We’re going to need everything she’s got. Hopefully, her info points us in the right direction, and we can get started soon.”

He stands up, waits for his brothers to stop him, then takes his empty plate and utensils to the sink. He pours himself another cup of tea and says, “I’ll be training, if anyone needs me” as he heads toward the dojo.

Raph gets up next, grabbing the last sausage patty and chomping on it as he takes his plate to the sink. “Good meeting, guys,” he says. “It’s weight lifting time.”

He leaves his two younger brothers alone.

Mikey continues to finish his breakfast, giving off the same quiet and contemplative energy he’s had the last two days.

Donnie was hoping they’d get left alone together. “Are you satisfied with the rules?” he says.

Mikey glances at him. “Yeah, I think so. We covered all our bases. I just hope—I just hope we’re okay.”

Donnie understands him perfectly. He’s nervous about this mission too. He sips on his now lukewarm tea and shifts his body toward his little brother. “So, I have some information for you about turtle social behavior, if you want to hear it.”

Mikey perks up at that. “Yeah, of course, I want to hear it.”

“Okay. Let’s start with sexual pair bonding: turtles don’t do it. They don’t form romantic relationships with their mates, their sexual partners. When turtles mate, it’s pretty much just to fertilize the females’ eggs. They don’t stay together after they complete the sex act, and there’s never been any evidence that mates have emotional attachments to each other.”

Mikey nods and doesn’t seem surprised or disappointed.

“A lot of animals are like that,” Donnie continues. “Humans are kind of rare when it comes to fusing love with sex and forming pair bonds with sexual partners. They’re also rare for their propensity to form nuclear families in which to raise children. Turtles don’t do that. Mother turtles lay their eggs, and once those baby turtles hatch, they’re on their own.”

“Dude,” says Mikey. “That’s harsh.”

Donnie shrugs. “Turtle species have survived a long time, so enough of those babies survive on their own well enough.”

“So turtles don’t fall in love and they don’t really care about family.”

“Right.”

“How are they not lonely?”

“I don’t know,” says Donnie. “Loneliness isn’t a universal emotion in the animal kingdom. Some species display it, some don’t. It depends on how social they are, and that all comes down to how they’ve been wired through millions of years of evolution.”

“Okay. So I’m guessing turtles don’t have sex as much as people,” Mikey says.

“Correct. They only have sex during breeding season, and that happens a couple times a year at most, depending on what kinda turtle you’re talking about. Humans have sex all the time, and they often use it as a bonding activity. That behavior’s consistent throughout primate species.”

“So…. If we don’t feel like something’s missing because we’re single, that’s probably because we’re turtles.”

“Probably,” says Donnie. “But we’re similar enough to humans that we care about our family and don’t want to go off to live by ourselves.”

“True,” says Mikey. “Why do you think it’s easy enough for us to live without sex, though?”

“Uh…. I’m not sure, honestly. It might be a side effect of the mutagen that transformed us. I mean, technically, we’re not supposed to exist…. We weren’t born like this. So it would make sense that we wouldn’t have the basic drive to have sex and reproduce like most animals. We probably aren’t fertile, and even if we are, we don’t come from a species of mutant turtles, you know? Sexual drive, biologically speaking, exists because it facilitates reproduction of a species. We don’t really have a species to keep alive.”

“I guess that makes sense…. But, dude. We all still….”

Mikey looks a little bashful as he trails off, and it’s obvious he hopes Donnie can read his mind.

“Get the urge to masturbate?” Donnie supplies. “Yeah. I’m going to assume that’s primarily hormonal and also the result of our human-like bodies and brains. Pretty sure wild turtles don’t masturbate. Lots of animals don’t. They can’t!”

Mikey gets up from the table to pour himself another glass of orange juice. He turns toward his brother, gesturing with his hands as he puts the bottle back in the fridge. “Okay, so, if we ran into other mutant turtles, there’s a chance we’d want to have sex with them just because they’d be the same as us?”

“Maybe. It’s hard to say.”

Mikey sits back down with his glass of OJ. “Could we…. Could we want to pair bond somehow even though we don’t really need the sex part?”

Donnie blinks. He hadn’t thought of that so clearly. “Well,” he starts. “I guess it’s possible. Most human pair bonding is sex-driven, and that seems to be true for other species that pair bond…. What you’re talking about, correct me if I’m wrong, is romantic relationships without sex. Like the opposite of turtle mating.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I think so.”

Donnie doesn’t speak for a little bit, staring down at the bottom of his empty mug, and Mikey sips his juice beside him.

“Is that what you want?” Donnie says. “A romantic relationship without the sex?”

“Dude, I don’t know,” Mikey says, and he sounds as earnest as he always does. “I was just wondering if something like that is even possible, you know? And if it is possible…. Is there something wrong with us for not wanting it?”

Donnie looks at his little brother. “You keep using that word. _Wrong_. I thought we all got past worrying about it years ago.”

“I haven’t worried about it at all until recently, when I started thinking about this stuff.”

Donnie goes quiet again. He’s got a lot of feelings churning through him now, but he can’t put them to words. What he knows for sure is he would hate for any of his brothers—but especially Mikey—to long for something they can’t have and be miserable forever as a result.

“What would be the appeal of a romantic relationship without sex?” Donnie says.

“Uhhhh….” Mikey shrugs with a smile. “I haven’t even thought that far, bro. Not the kinda stuff from the movies. The clichéd, like, rom-com type stuff. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it makes for a good story, but…. I’m fine without all that.”

Donnie watches his brother, waiting with piqued curiosity now. He’s never thought about any of this before himself, and it’s been a long time since he learned something new from his brother.

“I guess it’d be nice to have more affection,” Mikey says. “Like touching and stuff. Random acts of kindness. Just having the kind of relationship with somebody where you do nice stuff for each other all the time, just to show you really care. Those are pretty much the only things the four of us don’t have with each other. I think we got the trust and like—looking out for each other, quality time and whatever.”

Donnie smiles. He could argue that Leo and Raph still don’t trust anybody completely with their feelings, but they’re better about it now than they were as teenagers and young adults.

“Man,” Mikey says, getting to his feet and stretching like he just woke up from a dream. “This conversation was super intense. I don’t want to think this hard again for a while.”

Donnie shakes his head.

“Thanks for the information, though,” Mikey adds. “I guess I feel better now. I’m going to go play some video games. Wanna join?”

“Maybe after I write up our mission rules,” says Donnie. “Hey, Mikey?”

“Yeah?”

Donnie just looks at his little brother for a moment, wanting to make a suggestion but afraid…. Of rejection, he realizes. An alien feeling in his brother relationships.

But Mikey’s face lets him know, as always, that Mikey won’t judge him. It’s one of his best qualities: he’s the most accepting turtle in the family.

“If you want those things you mentioned…. We could always try giving them to each other,” Donnie says. He feels his face warm and wonders if he’s blushing.

A slow smile spreads through Mikey’s lips. “Aw, Donnie,” he says.

Now Donnie definitely feels like he’s blushing.

“That’s really sweet, dude. What are you picturing, exactly?”

“Well,” Donnie says. “You mentioned physical affection and random acts of kindness. We definitely don’t have much of those two elements. And something you didn’t mention that I’ve observed in human romantic relationships, at least in entertainment, is verbalization of one’s feelings toward the other person for no reason beyond expression. So…. Those three things, I guess?”

Mikey’s grin deepens. “Yeah, okay. Let’s do it. Let’s start right now.”

Mikey swoops onto Donnie and pulls him into a hug. He curls his arm around Donnie’s neck and head, and Donnie’s face is suddenly pressed against Mikey’s plastron. After the older turtle gets over his initial surprise, he softens and wraps his arms around his brother’s waist, a warm feeling spreading through him. They hug each other longer than they ever have before, except for in life-or-death situations.

Donnie enjoys it more than he would’ve predicted.

“Love you, Dee,” Mikey says in a lowered voice.

Donnie hasn’t heard those words from his brothers in a long time. He holds Mikey closer, smiling. “Love you too,” he replies.

* * *

The brothers climb through April’s open window that night and find her drinking a glass of red wine at her kitchen table. It’s late enough that she must’ve already had dinner. She smiles at them as they hop quietly into her apartment and surround her.

“Where’s Casey?” says Raph.

“Out of town,” April replies. “Visiting his sister. How are you guys?”

The turtles look around at each other, then back at April.

“We’re okay,” says Leo. “How are you?”

April gives a half-hearted shrug and purses her lips. “I’m okay, I guess. Still thinking about that story I covered. Raphael says you all saw it.”

“Yeah, that’s…. kinda why we’re here.”

“What do you mean?”

Leo steps forward and kneels before April, leaning on his hands on his raised knee. “My brothers and I are here because we’ve decided to go after the traffickers in this city, and we need all the information you have.”

April opens her mouth to protest, eyes wildly bouncing off Leo’s face and to the other three turtles standing behind him. But Leo holds up one hand to stop her.

“I’m called to do this, April,” he says. “I could feel that calling as soon as I watched your report. I meditated on it, talked to Master Splinter, and discussed with my brothers. We’ve agreed to move forward with this mission. We knows it’s dangerous—”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” says April. “You’ve known about this for what, three days? I’ve been working on this for weeks, and I still don’t know half as much as the cops do. You don’t have any of the details! You can’t possibly have a realistic idea of what you’re trying to get into!”

Leo bows his head, then looks up at her again. “You’re right. We don’t have all the details. That’s why we’re here, asking you to give them to us.”

“Leonardo, I can’t believe I’m saying this about you, but you haven’t thought this through. The risks to you four alone are off the charts, but it’s not just about you. Your father, Casey and I, anyone who’s ever helped you or given you shelter could be targeted by these men if they find out who you are.”

“April…. I’ve been thinking about this mission nonstop from every angle since your report. I have thought about you and my father and my brothers. How could I not? We’re not going to treat this mission like every other one we’ve done because it’s not. We have rules. If anything goes wrong, we’ll stop. And I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but we don’t plan on leaving any trafficker we lay eyes on alive.”

April’s eyes widen a little at that. She knows the turtles have killed enemies in combat since she first met them, but she’s never thought of them as assassins.

Leo stares at her with pleading eyes and earnestness all over his face, unmoving. She feels her resistance weakening. She drains her wine glass in a single drink, runs her hand through her hair, and finally gets up out of her chair.

Leo stands again, and the turtles watch her move into the living room to retrieve her work bag. She brings it back to the kitchen table and takes out a thick manila folder full of paper, slapping it down on the tabletop.

“That’s everything I’ve got,” she says and goes to pour herself another glass of wine. “Take it.”

Leo touches the folder with one finger. “Thank you,” he says. “We’ll return the file tomorrow night.”

“There’s a business card in there for Detective Max McGuire. She was my main contact in the NYPD. You’ll probably have to speak to her if you’re really going to do this. I can give her the talk before you reach out to her.”

Leo takes the file under his arm at least and says, “Thanks, April.”

Donnie takes a step toward her. “We won’t let anything happen to you and Casey,” he tells her.

She just looks at him, obviously unconvinced. “Yeah,” she says. “Sure.”

* * *

When Leo slips into the dojo early the following morning, he’s surprised to find Raphael already there. The red-banded turtle is practicing a weaponless kata, something he rarely does of his own volition. He catches Leo’s eye across the room but doesn’t pause in his movements. Leo pauses at the edge of mat, then bows before stepping on it. His original plan was to start with a fifteen minute warm-up, followed by forty-five minutes of sword practice, but now he approaches his brother with something else in mind.

Raph finishes his kata by the time Leo reaches him.

“You’re up early,” Leo says.

“Wanted to clear my head in a quiet house,” says Raph.

Leo knows exactly what that feels like. He does it every day. “What do you say to a sparring exercise? No weapons. It’s been a while since we did that.”

Raph thinks about it for a second, then nods.

The two brothers face each other and bow. The moment he’s upright again, Leo makes the first strike, and Raph blocks him without thinking, blocks Leo’s second blow, then hops back out of his brother’s range.

“April’s file bothers you,” Leo says.

“No shit,” Raph replies, blocking and punching. “It bothers you too, that’s why you want to go on the mission.”

Leo ducks under his brother’s high kick, then spins into a roundhouse kick that hits Raph’s shell and pushes the bigger turtle off balance. They look at each other with tension between them, tension that has nothing to do with their sparring.

Raph lunges at Leo, who evades him, then steps further to catch his brother with an undercut to his belly that makes Leo grunt. Leo swipes Raph’s fist away with his arm and throws a right hook at his brother’s head that comes close enough to brush at Raph’s skin.

“Anybody with a heart would feel fucked up over that file,” Raph says.

“Are you capable of keeping your emotions under control enough to successfully carry out our mission?” says Leo.

Raph surprises him, darting into his space, and he flinches back. Raph swipes Leo’s right leg out from under him, and the older turtles falls onto his shell. Raph straddles his brother before Leo can get up.

“I could ask you the same question,” Raph says, then throws a punch at Leo’s face that his brother dodges. With his other hand, Raph grabs his brother’s throat, and that makes Leo go still, staring up at Raphael with a combination of awareness that his brother could easily crush his windpipe and absolute trust that Raphael would never, ever intentionally hurt him. Leo wants to kick himself for allowing his opponent to get him in a chokehold; the fighter who pulls that move successfully always has the upper hand, at least as long as they can keep the pose.

Raph can feel Leo’s pulse beating against his palm. He relishes the small victory of getting Leonardo in this position, though he won’t gloat about it. He also secretly appreciates the strange intimacy of having his brother pinned under him like this, so vulnerable in a way Leo rarely is with anyone.

“Anger is an emotion, Leo,” Raph says, looking into his brother’s eyes. “I, of all people, know that. And I really question whether you’re cut out to do this mission without getting swallowed up in your own rage.”

Leo uses all his physical strength to flip Raph off of him, propelling himself with one hand on the mat, and kneels at Raphael’s side. He throws a false punch at his brother’s face that Raph blocks and uses as an opportunity to seize Leo’s wrist, flinging him down on his shell again behind Raph’s head. Raph gets back on his feet.

Nice move, Leo thinks, catching his breath.

Raph doesn’t come after him, waiting for Leo to stand.

Leo pushes himself up and says, “You didn’t answer my question.”

“It’s pretty fucked up, you doubting my professionalism,” Raph replies. “I’m not a kid anymore.”

They start to circle each other.

“It’s not like that,” Leo says. “I have the same concerns about Donnie and Mikey. This kind of work requires you to stay detached from the situation enough to do your job effectively, and it’s difficult to maintain that detachment. If looking at the case details upset you—”

Raph cracks a smile that’s almost a sneer. “You talk like it’s going to be a cake walk for you, not getting emotional. The only reason we’re even doing this mission is because of your emotions.”

“If the crime upset me to the point of distraction, I would avoid it, not run toward it.”

Raph shakes his head. “You have no idea how this mission is going to make you feel or whether you’ll be able to handle it. That’s all I want you to admit.”

Leo springs for his brother, hoping to get Raph on the floor again, and instead of stepping back out of his path, Raph grabs him in a bear hug that could easily allow him to punch Leo’s sides or knee him in the groin.

“Just tell the truth,” Raph says, looking into Leo’s eyes. “You’re as scared as the rest of us.”

Leo tries to push Raph away, creates space between their plastrons, then throws a punch at Raph’s head.

Raph lets him go and opens his arms in a gesture of neutrality.

“So you admit you’re afraid,” Leo says to him, looking at him and shifting his weight back and forth from one foot to the other.

A hint of amusement surfaces in Raph’s expression. “I never denied I was.”

“Then, why did you agree to do this?”

“Because it’s the right thing to do,” says Raph. “And you got a calling.”

Leo stops moving. He feels a surge of—guilt?

“I don’t want you or the others doing this just to please me,” he says.

“When have I ever done anything just to please you?” Raph quips, smirking. “I said it’s the right thing to do, and I meant it.”

Leo looks at the floor, still feeling like a terrible leader for dragging his brothers into something they’re afraid of.

“Hey,” Raph says, taking one step toward him. “If we really wanted to veto this mission, we would’ve done it.”

“Not if you thought I would go off and do it alone,” Leo replies.

“You said you wouldn’t. We believe you.”

Leo looks at his brother, now full of the emotion he hates most: self-doubt. He doesn’t know what to say, lifting his shoulders as if to physically prompt the words out of his mouth and dropping them in silence.

“I just want you to be honest with me,” says Raph. “About the fact that you’re scared too.”

If Leo has ever admitted to fear out loud, it was in childhood, and he can’t remember doing it. His brothers didn’t start calling him their “fearless leader” for nothing. Of course, he’s experienced fear throughout his life, just like them, but confessing to it has always seemed wrong. Not because he sees his own fear as weakness but because he feels he shouldn’t burden his brothers with it. Fear is something Leo must conquer on his own, again and again. That’s a fundamental part of being a warrior, a ninja.

Raph takes another couple steps toward his brother, all the fight now gone from his body and his face open and accepting in a way that’s more Donnie or Mikey than Raph. “It doesn’t matter what you’re afraid of. I don’t need to know. Just acknowledge that you are.”

Leo opens his mouth and closes it again. The truth is, he hasn’t allowed himself to feel any fear until now. He’s been too wrapped up in disgust, disbelief, anger, and conviction. He knows what he and his brothers will risk to undertake this mission, but he hasn’t dwelled on it.

Leo swallows, staring at his brother. “All right, fine,” he says, his tone light. “I’m afraid.”

Raph just looks at him as if Leo is a child who’s putting on a brave face. He seems to be waiting for more.

“I don’t know what else you want me to say, Raph,” Leo tells him. “But obviously, we’re done sparring, so….”

He starts to head off the mat toward the dojo entrance, not understanding why every important conversation he has with Raph ends up feeling like an argument even when it isn’t.

* * *

Detective Max McGuire has her jet black hair cut into a short bob, the ends of which brush at her jaw. She’s wearing black from head to toe: black jeans, black boots, a black t-shirt, a black blazer, and her golden badge gleams against her chest around a chain. She’s not wearing any makeup, and her fingernails are short and unpainted. She has a pretty but hardened face with chiseled cheekbones and thick brows. She’s striking—different somehow than all the women the turtles have met or seen up close.

When she sees them for the first time, their silhouettes in the shadows of the empty parking garage where they meet, she doesn’t flinch or back away or look the least bit shocked. That’s a first for the turtles.

“So, she wasn’t kidding,” Max says, when the turtles step into the light a few long paces away from her.

“No,” says Leo, as he and his brothers come to a stop. “She wasn’t.”

“Well, you know who I am. Who are you?”

“Leonardo. These are my brothers Raphael, Donatello, and Michelangelo.”

He points to each one as he names them.

“Did your giant turtle mother take an art history class in college?” Max says.

“Actually, we don’t have a mom,” Mikey clarifies, his tone weirdly cheerful. “I mean, I guess we had one, but we never knew her. Our father’s the one who named us.”

“Right. What do you want?”

“Did April tell you anything about why we wanted to meet with you?” says Leo.

“She said you’re interested in the sex trafficking activities I’ve been working on the last three years,” Max replies. “She didn’t define the nature of your interest.”

“Three years?” Donnie says, the sound of wonder in his voice strange to his brothers.

“What, you think this shit is new? It’s been going on longer than I’ve been a detective.”

“We’d like to help the NYPD deal with the problem,” Leo tells the detective.

“How the hell would you do that?” she says.

None of the turtles respond. Leo gives her a pointed look.

“April said you’re ninjas. She didn’t say anything about vigilantism.”

“We’re not a fan of that label,” says Raph.

“Unless you’re offering to do research or become informants, I don’t see what other word there is for what you’re suggesting.”

You said you’ve been working on this problem for three years,” Leo says. “How many arrests have you made in that time and how many of those arrests led to convictions?”

Max hesitates, showing the first sign—however slight—of wavering confidence. “Not that many,” she says. “Not enough.”

“And have you seen trafficking activity increase, decrease, or stay the same over time?”

“The only direction the line on the graph goes is up.”

Leo looks at her in silence for a moment, his brothers flanking him. “We care about this city, Detective McGuire,” he says. “We always have. We’ve always done our best to help people, to protect them from criminals.”

“Not to brag, but we totally helped take down the Foot Clan back in the 90s,” says Mikey, grinning.

“We want these traffickers out of New York,” Leo continues. “All we’re asking for is information. Enough to help us know where to look for them.”

Max snorts, crossing her arms against her chest. “You’re fucking delusional if you think I’m going to risk my career to enable a gang of vigilantes, mutants or human,” she says. “Good to know males are the same across species, though—with your idiotic fantasies of playing the hero, like you’re in some god damn video game.”

“With all due respect, detective, you don’t know what we’re capable of. I assure you it’s more than what any given member of the police can do. And we don’t even use guns.”

Raph smirks.

“I really don’t care what you can do with whatever weapons you’ve got,” says Max. “You’re four civilians. You have no idea what kind of people you’re talking about dancing with. They’re numerous, powerful, and the nastiest sons of bitches out there. If the feds can’t get trafficking under control in one city, what the hell makes you think you can?”

“We’re not suggesting we can wipe it out,” says Leo. “We’re just hoping to save as many people and take out as many traffickers as we can. Thin the ranks.”

Max shakes her head, taking a few steps to her left with her arms still crossed. “You guys are something else. Thinking you can ask a NYPD detective for three years’ worth of work so that you can go illegally, stupidly attack the most dangerous men in town and risk your own lives in the process. I hope April told you to fuck off before agreeing to speak to me on your behalf.”

None of the brothers answer. They watch her, and she stares at them, her face unreadable.

“I think we’re done here,” she says, uncrossing her arms. “This meeting never happened.”

“Detective,” Donatello says, stepping toward her without going as far as Leo. “We’re not trying to step on your toes, and we do respect that you’re the authority on this subject. We don’t want to do your job for you. We want to do ours. We may not be cops or work for the government, but we aren’t civilians. We’re ninjas. And we’re turtles. We’ve been fighting crime in these streets for fifteen years. You just didn’t know it. Think about that. All this time, you never heard about the four human-sized turtles who roam the city using martial arts to stop bad guys. If we’re that good at hiding ourselves from the NYPD, don’t you think we can keep doing it as we go after your traffickers?”

Leo suppresses a smile.

Max doesn’t move or speak for several seconds, as Donnie looks at her. Then, she says, “I’ll give you a certain amount of information on one condition.”

“Name it,” says Leo, feeling victorious.

“If you’re ever caught, you deny any connection to the NYPD, and you keep my name out of your story.”

“Fine by us.”

She’s quiet again for a beat, just looking at the four turtles. “I’ll give April the info within the next forty-eight hours,” she says.

Leo nods. 

“Do me a favor and keep your activities to yourselves,” she says. “I don’t want to hear about any of it.”

Leo and Donnie both raise their eye ridges at that.

“What I do want is any useful information you acquire,” Max continues. “Names, locations, numbers—the kind that can I follow up on and use to build up my case.”

Raph nods. “Roger that,” he says.

She gives the turtles a last look, then turns on her heel and gets back into her car.

* * *

The next day, the turtles go through April’s research together, piece by sickening piece. When they’re finished, they scatter throughout the lair, too disturbed to speak of what they’ve learned. They train with hardly any talk. Splinter doesn’t ask why.

Leo isn’t exactly shocked when Donnie finds him on his favorite rooftop that night. Leo’s been coming up here to think and be alone since he was a teenager. The building is just two blocks from the lair’s main entrance, and thanks to its height, the roof provides an excellent view. Nobody else ever uses it, for some reason. Leo could sit here all night if he wanted and watch the sun come up. He’s done just that a few times.

Donnie sits next to his brother, close enough for their shoulders to touch. Leo appreciates the contact. They sit together in silence for a few minutes, looking at the lights of New York City twinkling around them.

“Are you okay?” Donnie says.

Leo almost says yes. “I don’t know.”

Donnie doesn’t respond, wanting Leo to open up to him but not knowing how to coax his older brother into it.

“I just can’t wrap my head around…. what those women went through,” Leo says, after a minute. “What they’re still going through.”

“I know,” says Donnie, his voice quieter now. “I’ve been trying not to think about it. That’s the only way we’re going to be able to do this, Leo.”

“I just can’t believe—” Leo shakes his head. “I can’t believe humans would torture their own kind like that.”

Donnie has nothing wise or intelligent to say, so he remains silent, hoping his mere presence will comfort his brother.

Leo looks down into his lap. “I wish you and Raph and Mikey didn’t have to know about this stuff.”

Donnie looks over at Leo and feels a swell of emotion in his chest that takes his breath away. What’s going on with him?

“We’re not kids, Leo,” he says. “If you can handle it, so can we.”

“I didn’t say you can’t,” says Leo. “I said I wish you didn’t have to.”

They’re quiet again for a little while, each turtle feeling his brother’s sad, heavy energy.

“If anybody ever hurt you or Raph or Mikey like that….” Leo says. He feels a painful lump rise in his throat and swallows it. “My heart would be broken forever.”

Donnie thought Leo was going to finish that sentence with violence. What Leo admitted instead hits him in the gut. He turns his body toward Leo and wraps his long, lanky arms around his brother. If Leo is surprised by the hug, he doesn’t show it, just grips Donnie’s arm in his hand. Donnie rests his head on Leo’s, and Leo leans into his brother.

“Mine too,” Donnie says, almost whispering. He could cry, and he doesn’t know if it’s because of the idea of Leo’s broken heart or of his brothers being sexually violated or because he hasn’t heard Leo make such an intense emotional statement about their family before.

“I’ll die before I let anyone do that to you,” Leo tells him.

Donnie knows he means every word. He knows Raph and Mikey would die first too. So would he.

“Me too,” he says. 

This is why he has to go on the mission, Leo thinks. Doing nothing while those crimes happen in his city—to women and children—is not an option.

Donnie finally lets go of Leo and faces forward again, a little overwhelmed. The brothers don’t speak for a long stretch, and they don’t look at each other.

“Did you talk to Mikey?” Leo says, breaking the silence. “About his questions.”

“Uh, yeah,” Donnie says, sniffing. “Yeah, we talked. I think he’s satisfied with the information I gave him.”

“Good.” Leo pauses, searching the distance. “He can’t be distracted when we go out there.”

Donnie debates with himself whether to tell Leo what he and Mikey agreed upon regarding their relationship. Ever since he and his little brother had that talk, Donnie’s been thinking about bringing it up to Leo and Raph. It doesn’t seem right to leave them out. They should at least get to decide for themselves.

“We, uh—we talked about what we’re missing out on, being single….” Donnie starts. “Besides the sex. We identified a few a different components that would be nice to have and decided to try incorporating them into our relationship.”

Leo turns his head to look at Donnie, forgetting about the mission. “Really?” he says, genuinely curious.

Donnie nods. “Physical affection, acts of kindness, and expressing our feelings about each other.”

Leo blinks. “Oh,” he says, and looks away again.

Donnie wasn’t sure earlier if he was afraid of Leo’s judgment or disapproval. Now, he’s nervous, waiting for it. Prepared to defend himself and Mikey.

But Leo just sits quietly next to him, looking at the view, turning over the information in his mind. “If it makes the two of you happier, then good,” he finally says. And something about the way he speaks the words strikes Donnie as melancholy or wistful.

“Leo,” says Donnie. “You could join us. Mikey and I both think it could be a good way for all of us to improve our quality of life. I haven’t talked to Raph yet….”

Leo grins. “Good luck with that,” he interjects.

“If you ever get lonely….” Donnie continues. “This approach could help.”

The purple-banded turtle dares to look at his brother again, his desire to help Leo overpowering his fear of rejection. He knows Leo gets lonely. All the turtles do. But Leo—he’s the most remote of all the brothers, the hardest to connect with emotionally. Some part of Donnie has always been desperate for Leo to let him in, to let them all in.

Leo smiles faintly to himself, keeping his gaze trained on the city. Loneliness is one of those emotions he allows to wash over him like water. He’s learned how to do it expertly over the years. His loneliness—and that of his brothers’, whether they realize it or not—is about so much more than singlehood. It’s the loneliness of mutants, of being a creature who doesn’t belong in the world and never will. Nothing will ever take that away. The only way to live with it is to let it pass through you without wallowing.

Sensing Donnie’s hope that he agrees to this social experiment, Leo says, “How would it work?”

“However you want,” says Donnie. “Each relationship is unique. You get to decide how you want each one to be. How much and what kind of touch, how often you tell your brother what he means to you…. What kind of nice things you want to do for him.”

“Was this Mikey’s idea or yours?”

Donnie feels his face warm. “Mine,” he says.

Leo doesn’t speak again for a bit, contemplating the strange and totally unexpected proposition. He’s always known his family loves him, and that knowledge has been enough for him. He’s never really thought about love or his emotional needs beyond that. He doesn’t know if Donnie’s experiment will make him feel any better, if he needs any of those extra things.

But he can tell that Donnie wants him to give it a shot. So, Leo says, “Touch, kindness, and talking about our feelings, huh? All right. We can try.”

Donnie smiles softly. “If you change your mind at any point, it’s okay.”

“I know.” Leo chuckles under his breath. “Man, I can’t wait to see you bring this up to Raph.”

Donnie isn’t exactly looking forward to that, but he expects less resistance from his red-banded brother than Leo and Mikey seem to.

“If you want something specific from me, please ask,” Leo says. “Whatever it is. I won’t judge you even if I turn you down.”

Donnie’s touched by the straightforward invitation. “Same to you,” he replies, his tone even softer than before.

Leo pauses. “Thank you. For checking on me.”

Donnie lays his hand on Leo’s thigh, just above the knee and gives his brother a nod.

* * *

Mikey decides to fall back on his tried and true remedy for emotional distress: skateboarding. He takes his board into the sewer tunnels alone, comforted by the familiar sounds of dripping water and the wheels rolling over cement. He doesn’t hum the way he would if he was in a good mood, nor does he practice any of the tricks he’s perfected since adolescence. He just glides through the darkness and the puddles, letting his mind grow quiet the way it does when he meditates.

He had to get out of the lair—not just to clear his head on the board but to get away from his brothers and their own brooding energy. It’s bad enough when one of them is upset, but all three? Mikey can’t stand it, and he’s in no mood to play his typical role as the turtle who cheers everybody up.

He wishes he could forget what he saw and read in April’s file. He wishes he could go back to the days when the only kind of enemy he worried about was a Foot thug with piss-poor fighting skills stealing TV sets out of the back of a truck. He doesn’t want to think about women being captured, kidnapped, and raped. Every time he does, he feels nauseated and depressed. He can’t seem to find anger or a desire to punish the men responsible. Maybe if he could, it would be easier to face this mission.

Mikey could talk to Leo, ask him to call the whole thing off despite Raph and Donnie agreeing to the mission. Maybe Leo would listen to him if Mikey poured his heart out and begged. But Mikey saw the look in Leo’s eyes when the eldest turtle spoke of the mission, felt the quiet conviction rolling off his brother in waves as he petitioned April. Even if Mikey could trust that Leo wouldn’t go out there alone—and he’s not entirely sure he could—he would still have to deal with feeling bad about holding Leo back from something he believes in.

“Man, this sucks,” Mikey says out loud, rolling to a stop on his skateboard.

He hears tires grinding against the asphalt on the street above him, and a terrible feeling sucker punches him in the gut. He sees light shining through the sewer grate a couple paces ahead of him and almost doesn’t want to look.

But he must.

Mikey picks up his skateboard and carries it to the grate, acting on instinct. Whoever’s up there can’t know he’s down in the sewer. He climbs up onto the wall ledge and peers through the grate.

At first, all he sees is a van on the opposite side of the alley, black and nondescript, tinted windows too dark to see anything or anyone inside. Another vehicle arrives from the opposite direction, pulling right up to the van’s nose. Another black vehicle with darkly tinted windows and no distinguishing features that Mikey can see. It’s an SUV.

A white man gets out of the van, and a man with dark hair and olive skin gets out of the SUV. They speak quietly enough that Mikey can’t hear them well, not with the NYC noise pollution that continues nonstop despite the late hour. The foreboding feeling in his gut intensifies, and he doesn’t know why.

He watches as the two men move to the side of the van facing Mikey, and the driver opens the door. The two men look into the van, blocking the open doorway from view….

Long, dark hair suddenly cascades over the white man’s shoulder, along with slender white arms. A woman. A woman who isn’t showing any signs of consciousness. Mikey can’t see her face.

The brown man leads the white man back to his SUV, and the white man carries the woman over his shoulder. The brown man opens up the SUV’s trunk.

Mikey feels panicked. His eyes dart wildly all over the sewer, looking for a manhole but not finding one close enough. He’ll have to go back to the last one he saw, which must lead to the street adjacent to the alley.

He leaves his skateboard below the grate and runs to that manhole cover, not even stopping to consider he might be seen coming out of it. He pops up through it and onto a quiet one-way street, then bolts for the alley way.

He catches a glimpse of the woman right before the men shut the back of the SUV.

Mikey surges forward and pounces on the driver of the SUV before the man can get back behind the wheel. The man’s got no idea what hit him, and Mikey wastes no time turning him onto his back and jabbing at his face once, twice, three times.

The headlights on the van come on, streaming into Mikey’s face, and Mikey pauses long enough to look up and see the van’s driver gawking at him from behind the wheel. Mikey doesn’t want him to get away, but the man underneath him is still half-conscious. And the woman’s in the SUV.

Mikey punches the SUV driver again, the man’s face already bloodied and bruised, then hops onto his feet as if to run for the van.

The van’s driver throws the vehicle into reverse and backs it all the way to the other end of the alley, tires squealing. Mikey doesn’t run after him, knowing it’s pointless. The van backs into the street and speeds away.

The SUV driver grabs at Mikey’s ankle, throwing the turtle off balance enough that Mikey flips forward onto his hands and back onto his feet. The man is disoriented enough from Mikey’s head shots that he moves slow as he gets onto his knees and attempt to stand, bracing himself against the SUV. He dropped his keys when Mikey throttled him, and he seems to search the ground at his feet for them before meeting Mikey’s gaze and glaring at him with a venomous expression.

Mikey freezes for just a moment, unsure what he’s supposed to do here. He could kill him with blunt force, but he usually doesn’t kill an enemy unless he’s forced to do so in self-defense. If he doesn’t kill him, chances are the guy gets away even if Mikey leaves him unconscious before fleeing with the woman.

Mikey roundhouse kicks the man into the side of the SUV, and the man grunts, the air knocked out of him. Mikey kicks him again and again in the belly, and the man’s knees give out underneath him. He slumps to the ground, still conscious, and Mikey unleashes one set of nun chucks, using them to hit the guy in the face.

The man collapses face down on the ground, and he doesn’t move. Mikey waits to make sure the man is going to stay down, then goes around to the other side of the SUV. He checks the glove box for zip ties and sure enough, the man has several stashed in there. Mikey binds the man’s wrists behind his back with the zip tie and leaves him where he landed. He sees the key to the SUV gleaming silver a few feet away and picks it up, using it to unlock the trunk.

The woman is still unconscious. Mikey pushes the sleek, black hair out of her face and looks at her. He checks her pulse and finds it strong and steady. She’s got her hands bound in front of her. She has to be twenty-something years old. He checks her pockets for any form of ID but doesn’t find any.

Mikey picks her up gently and starts walking toward the street where he came up. He’s shaking, he realizes. He waits at the mouth of the alleyway until the coast is clear, then takes her down into the sewers.

* * *

“Guys?” Mikey calls out when he enters the lair.

All three of his brothers know instantly that something’s wrong. Mikey’s voice sounds all wrong. Raph quits shadowboxing, Donatello gets up from his lab chair, and Leo emerges from the dojo.

“Mikey?” Raph says, before he sees his youngest brother.

Donatello gets to Mikey first and stops dead in his tracks when he sees the woman that Mikey lays down on one of the sofas. Leo sees Donatello’s shocked expression and posture before he sees Mikey, and once he’s close enough to the living room, he follows Donnie’s gaze to the woman. Raph comes up behind Leo, the two of them not far from Donnie, and freezes himself when he sees what Mikey’s brought home.

Mikey looks up at his brothers with an apologetic face and glistening eyes, and it’s like his brothers have been transported back in time fifteen years, to the night when Raph brought April to the lair.

“I’m sorry,” Mikey says, sounding like he might cry any second. “I didn’t know what else to do. She’s not waking up and these guys had her in the back of a van and I think they were going to take her away and….”

His brothers all rush toward him, Donatello moving fastest. Donnie kneels at the woman’s side to check her pulse, while Leo seizes Mikey by the shoulders.

“It’s okay, Mikey,” Leo says, looking into his eyes. “You did the right thing.”

“Vitals are good,” Donnie announces. “She must’ve been drugged. No sign of head trauma.”

“Are you hurt?” Raph says to Mikey, a hard edge in his voice.

Mikey shakes his head. “I’m fine, I… left one guy tied up in an alley. The other one got away. It was just two of them, it wasn’t even a fight….”

Leo’s eyes light up. “You caught one?” he says. “Where is he?”

Mikey hangs his head, his legs weak under him.

Leo shakes him a little. “Mikey.”

“Six blocks west, three blocks north,” Mikey says. “The alley’s on the west side of the street.”

“Leo,” Donnie says.

Leo looks down at his purple-banded brother.

“We need to get this woman to a hospital,” Donnie tells him.

Leo nods. “Okay. I’ll call Detective McGuire.”

“Mad Max?” says Raph. “What the hell you calling her for?”

“Because, Raph, she needs to know about this. She needs to pick up the guy Mikey caught and she needs to know where we take this woman, so she can talk to her about what happened.”

Mikey sniffs, tears finally spilling down his cheeks, and Leo looks at him. Raph and Donnie look at him too.

Leo pulls Mikey into a hug. “It’s gonna be okay,” he says to his youngest brother. “You saved her, Mikey.”

Mikey curls his arms up and around Leo and weeps into his big brother’s shoulder.

Raph watches him with mounting anger, as Donnie stands up on Leo’s other side and looks at his two hugging brothers.

“It’s gonna be okay,” Leo says again, then pulls out of the hug and passes Mikey to Raph.

Raph takes Mikey in his arms, as Leo steps away to call McGuire. Mikey continues to cry without trying to stop, clinging to Raphael. Donnie watches them, at a loss for what do or say. He glances down at the woman passed out on their sofa, then back up at his little brother who’s more upset than he’s been in recent memory.

“You did good, Mike,” Raph says to his brother, rubbing Mikey’s shell a little and making eye contact with Donnie. “You’re a fucking badass taking on those creeps alone.”

McGuire doesn’t say hello when she answers Leo’s call. “Detective Max McGuire, NYPD. Who am I’m speaking with?” she says.

“Detective,” says Leo. “This is Leonardo. From the other night.”

She lowers her voice to a murmur. “I should’ve told you never to call me directly. If you’re looking for the information I promised you, I said I would give it to our mutual contact within 48 hours. I’m not late.”

“My brother just saved a woman. I can’t say for sure, but it looks like he stopped a trafficking deal from going down. One of the men is still at the crime scene, and he’s not leaving on his own.”

McGuire is silent.

“We’re taking the woman to the nearest ER,” says Leo. “She’s unconscious, but when she wakes up, I suggest you talk to her.”

“What hospital?” McGuire says.

“St. Luke’s.”

“I’ll meet you there and take her in. You better hope she doesn’t wake up. Text me the location of the crime scene.”

The call disconnects. 

The brothers wrap the woman in a soft blanket and load her into the back of their truck. Mikey sits with her head in his lap, and Raph stays with them, looking at his brother’s mournful face and wishing he could go back for the man in the alley. Donnie drives, and Leo sits in the shotgun seat next to him, silent and wound up.


	3. Chapter 3

The turtles swoop back into April’s apartment the next evening, unusually quiet. Detective Max McGuire is waiting for them, along with April herself. Max looks as grave as the turtles feel and maybe just as tired. She’s on her feet near April’s kitchen table, and she crosses her arms against her chest when she faces the turtles.

“Guys,” April says, from her chair at the table.

Leo nods at her and says her name in acknowledgement.

“Is she okay?” Mikey says to Max, without so much as a hello. “Did she wake up?”

“She’s physically fine,” McGuire replies. “Her doctor gave her a clean bill of health. She woke up late this morning and felt like she had the worst hangover in history. When I spoke to her, she was coherent.”

Mikey sighs in relief, and Donnie rests his hand on Mikey’s shoulder.

“The woman’s name is Vanessa Hines,” McGuire says. “According to her, she met two friends for drinks at the Locked Bar. Her friends left, and she stayed for another drink. She thought she was drunk and planned on calling a cab to take her home. The last thing she remembers is going to the bathroom in that bar. She blacked out there and has no memory of anything that happened leading up to the hospital.”

The turtles grimace and glance at each other.

“Her intoxication symptoms are consistent with that of common date rape drugs, and she tested positive for GHB,” Max continues. “She didn’t display any physical signs of sexual assault.”

All four brothers visibly relax, feeling the shift in each other’s energy.

“Thank god,” says Mikey.

“Our man on the run must’ve loaded her into his vehicle and taken her directly to that exchange spot,” says McGuire. “She got lucky. She’ll only have to overcome the trauma of having been drugged.”

“Have you spoken to Vanessa’s friends or the bar staff yet?” says Leo.

“Yes. So far, nobody remembers seeing a suspicious man hanging around her last night or carrying her out of the bar. I’m guessing he parked his van behind the building and took her out the back door. We’ve got the names of everyone who paid a bill at the bar with a credit card, and we’re going to run them through our records system to see if we get any hits.”

Donnie hesitates before asking: “Did she—did she have anything to say about the kidnapper Mikey saw in that van?”

McGuire shakes her head. “No. I wish. But unless something new comes back to her in the next few days, I think we’re on our own when it comes to identifying that bastard. Michelangelo’s description is detailed enough. If we had a license plate number for the van, that might get us somewhere. But we don’t.”

“I’m glad the girl’s all right and all,” says Raphael. “I am. But what I came here to find out is who that motherfucker Mikey tied up is. And what you’re going to do with him.”

The other three turtles all turn their attention back to McGuire, and Leo bites his tongue to prevent chastising Raphael for his approach.

McGuire slides her eyes onto the red-banded turtle, who’s standing in the back of the turtle group. Her expression is unreadable. “Ricky Gallego,” she says. “He’s got a couple prior arrests for domestic violence, drunk and disorderly, assault—but nothing to do with sex trafficking. Not even rape. He’s thirty-two years old, and his last arrest was seven years ago. He’s not on the feds’ radar as a trafficker. And so far, he’s not talking.”

“I could help you with that,” says Raphael, stepping forward with one hand clenched in a fist.

“As much as I would love to sic you on him, I’m not going to take the risk of sneaking you in to see him. And chances are, he’ll be held without bond until trial, whenever that is.”

Raphael slumps a little but doesn’t growl. His brothers can feel how much he wants to be left alone in a room with Gallego.

“As soon as he gives up our mystery man’s name, I’ll let you know,” McGuire tells the turtles. She moves to the kitchen table and picks up a thick manila folder, then offers it to Leo. “That’s everything I’m willing to give you for now on the work I’ve done in the last three years. Maybe I’ll give you more down the road. We’ll see.”

“Thank you,” Leo says, giving her a small bow.

“Just remember the terms of our agreement.”

McGuire doesn’t have to threaten them with the consequences of breaking those terms. They can all hear the threat in her voice.

* * *

Raphael walks into the lair that night with an extra-large pizza from the turtles’ favorite neighborhood joint, bringing it to the kitchen table while still in his disguise. These days, it’s a Yankees cap, sweatpants, and a hoodie. He starts stripping the clothes off as soon as the pizza box is on the table, taking the outfit back to his room.

“Dinner’s served, everybody,” he calls on his way back to the kitchen. 

One by one, his brothers and father emerge: Leo and Splinter from the dojo, Donnie from the lab, Mikey from his room. They’re all quiet as they approach Raphael in the kitchen. The red-banded turtle sets plates around the table, then flips open the pizza box. He didn’t realize he was hoping for a happy hum from Mikey until it doesn’t come, leaving Raph disappointed. The pizza is his way of trying to cheer everyone up but especially Mikey.

Everybody takes the slices they want and settle into their seats.

“Thanks, Raph,” Donnie says at his brother’s left, with a smile that’s meant to be encouraging.

“We need to talk about what happened,” says Leo, after a couple minutes.

Raph sighs. Talking about Mikey rescuing Vanessa is the exact opposite of what he intended for this meal. “We talked about it plenty at April’s,” he says. “No sense in beating a dead horse.”

“We haven’t talked about what Vanessa’s rescue means to us, and we should. It’s obviously affected us. We should be able to discuss how.”

Raph almost rolls his eyes and resists the urge to drag Leo away into a private spot so he can tell him: “Shut the fuck up and let Mikey move on.”

“The most important thing I can say about the events of the last twenty-four hours,” Master Splinter says. “is how proud I am of you, Michelangelo. You saved a young woman from a terrible fate, and you did so without the help of your brothers. You displayed great courage, my son.”

Mikey—who would normally blush at this kind of recognition and praise from his father—offers Splinter a weak smile and ducks his head. “Thank you, sensei,” he murmurs.

Splinter pats Mikey’s hand, then looks around the table at his other sons. “The emotions that now overwhelm you all are to be expected after your first encounter with the dark criminal world you have chosen to face,” he says. “They will pass and more quickly, if you share the burden with each other.”

Leo nods, ever attentive to their father’s wisdom.

“This mission is a noble one,” Splinter continues. “Yet I fear it will weigh too heavy on your hearts, stealing your joy and hope, hardening you in ways I never wanted. If you are truly committed to this work and united in your purpose, I will not ask you to abandon the path. But guard your hearts and your minds, my sons. And do not give up your softness, for it is this that makes you the great beings you are.”

Splinter reaches for his water cup, signaling the end of his speech, but the turtles sit in silence around him for a minute or two, letting his words sink in.

“I’m proud of you too, Mikey,” Leo says, looking right at his youngest brother. “You’ve brought honor to the family.” 

The gravity of this statement almost surpasses that of Splinter’s. Mikey can’t remember if Leo’s ever expressed pride in any of his brothers before. He stares at Leo in awe.

“I—I broke the rule,” says Mikey. “About not working the mission alone.”

“Aw, man, don’t tell me you been thinking any of us would be mad about that,” Raph replies.

“It was a special circumstance,” Leo says to Mikey, keeping his voice gentle. “You didn’t have a choice. If you had come here to get us first, we would’ve got there too late. You did the right thing, Mike. You saved Vanessa.”

“The rule is meant to prevent us from going on a pre-meditated operation alone,” says Donnie. “If it had been me or Leo or Raph in your place, Mikey, I’m sure we would’ve done the same thing you did.”

“Damn right,” Raph says.

Mikey looks a little relieved but still bewildered. He drops his gaze.

“You made it out safe,” Leo tells him. “That’s all that matters.”

Raph and Donnie nod.

“We know what happened upset you,” Donnie says to Mikey. “We just want to know you’re okay—and if you’re not, then you have to tell us, so we can find a way to help you.”

“I am okay,” says Mikey. “It’s just…. Every time I think about how close it was, what would’ve happened to Vanessa if I was a few minutes late or if I hadn’t been out skateboarding at all….”

Splinter lays his hand on Mikey’s arm.

“She didn’t have a chance,” Mikey says, staring at his empty plate. “She could’ve been….”

“There is no use in dwelling on the what if’s, my son,” Splinter says. “The key to a calm mind is remaining focused on the present moment, letting go of the past and the future. Think of what it is, not what could’ve been.”

“You saved her, Mikey,” says Leo. “She’s safe. And so are you.”

The youngest turtle doesn’t look consoled or convinced.

“I can’t speak for anyone else,” Donnie says, after a pause. “But Mikey rescuing Vanessa made this problem more real to me. The idea that this is happening to women every day in our city makes me sick.” Donnie looks into Leo’s eyes. “I understand why you feel called to this mission, Leo. And I’m with you.”

Leo nods, grateful for the open show of support. “If this gets voted down, I’ll accept it, but after what happened, I want to suggest an amendment to one of our rules. Originally, we agreed that we would only work on this mission as a complete team. The four of us, together, on every operation. But I think we could change that to a two-turtle requirement. If Donnie and I go on a rescue or an attack, Raph and Mikey could choose to sit it out.”

Raph shakes his head. “No way,” he says, voice quiet. “Two of us at a time ain’t enough.”

Leo glances at Donnie, who doesn’t protest.

“I’m not backing down if the rest of you are going out there,” says Mikey, eyes fixed on his plate again.

Leo hates the idea of dragging Mikey along if he’s this upset, but he won’t bench his brother for Mikey’s own good, as if the youngest turtle was a kid.

“Okay,” Leo says. “Then we’ll work as a team.”

The family clears the pizza box, and Donnie does the dishes. Splinter is the first to leave, squeezing Mikey’s shoulder before he retires to his room. The brothers head toward their rooms together, Donnie taking a detour to his lab. None of them are sure how much sleep they’ll get tonight. 

* * *

Later, Donnie’s in bed reading when he hears a soft knock on his door.

“Come in,” he says.

Mikey pokes his head into the room.

Donnie swings his legs over the side of the bed, putting his book aside. “Hey,” he says.

Mikey comes in, looking a little bashful, shutting the door behind him. “Hey,” he replies.

“Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, I guess. I was just wondering…. Uh… if I could sleep here tonight.”

Donnie blinks and quickly registers that his little brother had to muster courage to come here and ask him for this. Some part of him must be afraid that Donnie will throw him out, act like his request is childish or inappropriate, but he needs a brother’s company enough to risk that reaction.

Donnie offers Mikey a gentle smile and waves him over.

Mikey crosses the room at an easy pace, trying not to look at Donnie, and climbs into the space his brother makes for him. Donnie has backed into the bed, his shell against the wall. Mikey lies down on his side, facing away from Donnie.

Donnie pulls the sheet and blanket up over the two of them, turns out the light, and lies on his side, facing Mikey. He’s not sure what to do, how much contact Mikey wants if any.

“Mikey,” Donnie says, after a minute. “Do you want me to—”

“Yeah,” says Mikey. “If that’s cool.”

Donnie presses himself up against Mikey’s shell and curls his arm around Mikey’s waist. Mikey exhales in relief, finding his brother’s hand in the dark and squeezing it.

Donnie smiles and shuts his eyes, letting himself to drift to sleep. 

* * *

In the morning, Leo and Raphael make it to the breakfast table first and notice Donnie and Mikey arriving together a half hour later. The two older turtles don’t think much of it. Mikey stretches and yawns on his way to the fridge and procures the orange juice, while Donnie beelines for the coffee maker, which already has hot coffee in the pot.

“Sleep well?” Leo says. He’s sitting across from Raphael with a steaming mug of tea and a bowl of his favorite cereal.

“Yeah, I did,” Donnie replies. He notes that today is a fix-your-own-breakfast day and starts thinking about what he wants. “You?”

“I think so. Mikey?”

The youngest turtle looks over his shoulder at Leo where he stands at the kitchen counter fixing his own cereal bowl. “Yeah, man, slept fine.”

He sounds a little more upbeat than he was yesterday, a little closer to his usual self. That sets Leo’s mind at ease.

Donnie roots through the produce drawer in the fridge and finds a banana that’s starting to brown. He takes it out and decides to cut it up for a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios.

Mikey sits down in the chair to Leo’s right and Raph’s left, facing the kitchen counter. He starts digging into his Lucky Charms, then glances at Raph. “You’re quiet,” he says.

Raph looks at him. “It’s 8:30 in the morning, Mike. I ain’t warmed up for the day yet,” he says, his tone matter-of-fact. He’s got today’s _New York Times_ tucked under his elbow, and Mikey wonders if Raph read something in there that’s got him thinking.

Donnie sits down in the last empty chair. “Master Splinter?” he says.

“Eating in his room,” says Leo. “He wants to be left alone until ten o’clock training.”

“Is he gardening again?” Mikey says.

Leo nods and drinks more of his tea.

Gardening is one hobby he picked up from their father; the bonsai trees in his room are well-cared for and neatly manicured. If they didn’t live underground, Leo would probably keep flowers and grow vegetables. Donnie has long understood that Leo finds the bonsai trees calming, and he’s always silently appreciated the insight gardening gives him to Leo’s caring side. The eldest turtle may not be the most emotionally expressive or in tune, but he knows how to identify needs and meet them. He cares about the trees, tending to them with the same attentive precision he brings to everything else in his life.

Raph sips on his coffee, his mind somewhere else. Mikey’s right—he’s uncharacteristically quiet.

“Anything we should know about in the paper, Raph?” Donnie says.

Raphael acts like he’d forgotten all about the newspaper under his left elbow, glancing down at it like he didn’t know it was there. “Uh, no. Nothing we can do anything about, anyway.”

Mikey’s energy feels different now than it did last night, closer to his default. Leo and Donnie both notice, though Donnie’s quiet look at his little brother possesses a knowledge that Leo’s look doesn’t.

“So, what’s the plan, man?” Mikey says to Leo, looking at him across the table. “What’s next?”

“I don’t know yet,” says Leo. “Obviously, finding the man who got away, Vanessa’s original kidnapper, is at the top of the list. But I’m not sure how to start hunting him down. We could wait to hear from Max, see if Gallego gives up the guy’s name…. But if he doesn’t, we’ll have to figure out who he is on our own. That will be a challenge.”

“Might be easier than you think,” Donnie tells him, the gears in his head already turning.

“If we find the guy, then what?” Mikey says.

The look he gives Leonardo—the eldest brother can’t remember ever seeing it before.

“You know what,” Raph says, lifting his eyes to Leo’s face.

“One step at a time,” says Leo, sobered by the sudden charge in the air, his brothers’ energy almost overwhelming him.

He wants to kill the mystery man just as much as Raph and Mikey do, but since they spoke to Max, Leo has realized that killing the man too soon or too quickly could be a mistake. If the man has connections to a broader trafficking network—which is likely—he’ll be more valuable alive, even if only temporarily.

Leo finishes his tea, then takes his empty cereal bowl and spoon to the sink. “First, we identify him,” he says, facing his brothers. “Then, we find him. Once we know where he is, we’ll come up with a plan for what to do with him.”

He walks away, waiting for a response that never comes.

* * *

After the brothers’ two-hour training session, Splinter offers to make lunch, and Leo and Mikey follow him out of the dojo to help. Donnie, left alone with Raphael, sees his opportunity and takes it.

“Hey, Raph?” Donnie says, behind his brother on their way out of the room.

“What’s up?” Raph replies.

“I, uh, was wondering if we could talk. In private. Maybe in my lab?”

Raph raises his eye ridges. “Okay. Is something wrong?”

“No, everything’s fine,” says Donnie. “Well, as much as it can be right now.”

Donnie leads the way to the lab, shutting the door behind his brother. He spots the mug of unfinished tea he left behind on his desk that morning and reaches for it once he’s close enough.

Raphael sits on the bean bag Donnie keeps in the corner of the room specifically for his brothers. Donnie sits in his chair, turning it to face Raphael and rolling toward him. He holds his mug on his thigh. He scrubs at the back of his head with his free hand, and Raphael is nervous, not knowing what to expect.

“You heard Mikey asking about our social nature the other day, right?” Donnie says.

Raph blinks. “You mean, when he was talking about us being single?”

Donnie nods.

“Yeah. What about it?”

“Well—I did some research for him, and we talked. And I guess we kinda came to this agreement about trying to give each other the things we could get from a romantic relationship.”

Raphael feels his blood pressure drop suddenly. “Donnie, if you’re trying to break it to me that you and Mikey are fucking….”

“No!” Donnie says. “No, that’s not it at all. This isn’t about sex. In fact, we talked about that because it’s obvious that none of us are as sexually frustrated as we would be if we were a bunch of human men not getting laid. He wanted to know why. My theory is the mutagen that changed us into what we are basically removed most of our sexual impulses because we’re technically not supposed to exist and don’t really belong to a species that can reproduce itself.”

Raph scoffs. “Speak for yourself, bro. I got plenty of impulse—toward _Sports Illustrated_ centerfolds, for starters.”

“You’re attracted to those human women,” says Donnie. “But you’re not chomping at the bit because of the lack of partnered sexual activity.”

Raph just looks at him, letting the observation sink in. He can’t argue with it. Sure, he’s entertained the idea of having sex with women, but he’s not particularly bothered by the fact that he hasn’t done it. He masturbates—assumes all of his brothers do too—but he’s never had the overwhelming urge to have sex with real human women he’s seen in person. The idea of having sex with April, for example, gives him the creeps.

“So, what are you saying?” Raph asks his brother.

Donnie takes a breath. “Romantic relationships are not just about sex,” he says. “Humans interact with their mates, their romantic partners, in certain ways that provide emotional gratification outside of sexual activity. Turtles don’t even pair bond, which is probably why we’re not driven toward that ourselves, but humans do. Humans also value family, unlike turtles, and that’s definitely where we get our own familial feelings from.”

Raphael’s eyes widen a little. He’s spent all his life seeing himself as distinctly non-human, an outsider in a world dominated by humans. To hear that he is more like them than like turtles in an important way shocks him.

“Mikey and I just decided that maybe we could benefit from giving each other the nonsexual aspects of romantic relationships,” Donnie continues. “Specifically, physical affection, acts of kindness, and verbal expressions of our feelings for each other. I talked to Leo—”

“Leo’s in on this?” Raph says. “You’ve gotta be kidding.”

“I talked to him pretty recently. Mikey and I haven’t actually had a chance to put the new elements into practice with him yet….”

Now, Raphael scratches the back of his head, feeling a little bit bewildered and not sure why. On the one hand, he’s skeptical of Donnie’s idea. On the other hand, he’s a little hurt he’s the last one to get an invite.

“So, I’m asking,” Donnie says. “If you want to try this out with us.”

Raphael glances at his brother, thrown off balance and suddenly self-conscious in a way he never is.

“It’s okay if you don’t,” Donnie adds, though as soon as he says it, he realizes how disappointed he’ll be if Raphael rejects the idea. “In any case, you should know what’s going on, so it doesn’t weird you out or whatever.”

Donnie sips on his cold tea, trying not to watch Raphael’s face too much.

Raphael sits there in the bean bag, not looking at Donnie, feeling his gut tighten. He’s not sure why he feels tense about this or what exactly he is feeling. This was the last thing he would’ve guessed Donnie wanted to discuss.

“It would be totally up to you how each of your relationships with us would change,” Donnie says, now staring at the chair seam he’s picking at next to his left thigh. “They don’t have to be identical. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. And if you experiment with these elements and decide you want to go back to the way things were, that’s fine too.”

Raphael recognizes that Donnie’s working really hard to give him an out, and it dawns on him that must be because his brother fears the kind of rejection that results in greater distance between them. Donnie must’ve gone into this conversation expecting Raphael to turn him and the others down. He can’t blame him—Raphael is not known for his willingness to be emotionally vulnerable—but it stings a little. If Leo, who’s about as emotionally demonstrative as an actual fucking box turtle, said yes to Donnie and Mikey’s experiment, Raph sure as hell can take it on.

“You’re talking about being closer?” he says, looking up at Donnie.

Donnie meets his gaze, both hands now clutching his mug. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I guess, in a way. Might be better to say more connected than closer….”

Raph doesn’t know what the difference is. “Why would you think I’d say no to that?” he blurts out.

“I never said I did.”

“You didn’t have to. It’s pretty clear you’re waiting for me to shoot you down and—and talk shit about the whole thing.”

Donnie can tell he’s offended Raphael, maybe even hurt his older brother’s feelings, and that was the absolute last thing he wanted to do. He doesn’t know what to say, so he just sits there looking at Raph with apologetic eyes.

“Well, you’re wrong,” Raphael tells him. “I’m not going to talk shit. Maybe it’s kinda strange…. But all you’re really talking about here is being nicer to each other and more affectionate. If all three of you are going to make an effort to do that with each other, how could I blow you off?”

Donnie gives his brother a quiet smile. Sometimes, Raphael surprises him in the best of ways. “So you’re in?”

Raphael blinks at him. “Yeah,” he says. “I’m in. Of course, I’m in.”

“Okay. Cool.”

Raph stands up. “All right. Now, what?”

Donnie shrugs, a bright grin on his face. “Whatever you want, dude,” he says.

Raphael looks a little lost, like he’s going to have to go think about what he wants for a couple days.

Donnie hops out of his chair, setting his mug on his desk, then pulls Raph into a hug.

Raphael hugs him back without hesitation because that’s what you do when your brother hugs you. But as he stands there, he realizes how long it’s been since the last time he and Donnie—or he and any of his brothers—hugged. They touch each other a lot, much more than most human brothers probably do, because they train together every day. But this is different, this intentional arms-around-each-other. Raphael closes his eyes and leans into Donnie.

Donnie registers the motion and feels his heart lift. He doesn’t let go until Raphael does. 

* * *

Leo’s not sure if Detective McGuire left Vanessa’s address in the file on purpose or if she forgot about it. He thinks about it for a couple days, long enough for her to get out of the hospital and settled in, before surrendering to his urge to check on her. He leaves the lair in the dead of night, when his family’s asleep, being as careful to stay silent as if he were on a B&E search mission with his brothers. He brings a timer with him and sets it for ninety minutes, which should give him just enough time to come back before anyone wakes up at home.

Vanessa lives in a third story apartment in a four-story building. Morningside Heights—not too far from the lair. Leo assumes she’ll be asleep, and he plans on sneaking into her room to see with his own eyes that she’s all right. If he were human, he would wake her up to talk to her, but he knows the last thing she needs right now is wake up to a giant mutant turtle in her bedroom at four-something in the morning.

When Leo reaches the roof of the right building, he climbs down to the fire escape that ought to be outside Vanessa’s apartment—only to see a faint light in her bedroom and the woman herself sitting up in bed. He freezes outside her window, staring right at her, and she looks over at him after a few seconds. Instead of leaping out of the bed and screaming, she stays still and silent, gazing at him. He notices she’s got buds in her ears, and the light is coming from her iPod. He doesn’t know what to do. Disappear? Go in?

Vanessa gets out of bed and approaches the window, startling Leo enough to almost make him flinch. She pushes the bottom half of the window up and sticks the upper half of her body outside.

“You coming in or what?” she says.

Leo blinks at her.

She goes back to her bed, leaving the window open.

He hesitates, then slips into the room, his body blocking the window from her view. He glances at the closed door, realizing she must have a roommate or two who could potentially hear him if he speaks above a whisper. He looks at her in awe, wondering why she’s not panicking.

Vanessa takes her buds out of her ears and looks Leo over. “I was kinda hoping you would find me,” she says. “The detective told me about you. I thought she was a crack pot at first, but…. She seemed pretty serious.”

Leo’s head spins. McGuire told this woman the truth about him and his brothers? Is she insane? He’s going to have to chew her out on the phone later.

“I wanted to know who saved me,” Vanessa tells him. “She tried to tell me it was the cops, but I knew that was bullshit. I wanted a name. I wanted her to arrange a meeting with the person, so I could say thank you face-to-face. Then she told me I was saved by a ninja turtle named Michelangelo, and he can’t be seen in public.”

Leo swallows. “He’s my brother. My youngest brother, actually. We call him Mikey.”

Vanessa stays quiet for a moment. “So you can really talk. Why are you here instead of him?”

“He and my other brothers don’t know I’m here. I’m not supposed to be. None of us are supposed to show ourselves to people unless we have a really good reason. I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

“What’s your name?”

“Leonardo. Leo, for short.”

She looks just past his face. “Are those swords? On your back?”

Leo nods.

Vanessa shakes her head. “This is somehow less crazy than what happened to me….,” she says. “What almost happened to me.”

Leo doesn’t know what to say, so he just stands there and looks at her.

Vanessa takes a breath and says, “I’m mostly okay, I guess. I’m still trying to process. I still don’t remember anything. They gave me these pills in case I start to freak out or if I have trouble sleeping. I haven’t taken any yet, but I’ve only been home for two days.”

Leo’s quiet, feeling like he’s holding his breath to avoid being heard by anyone else in the apartment, then takes a chance. “Do you have someone you can talk to?” he says.

“I have my sister. She’s asleep in the next room. But if you mean someone like a therapist, then no.”

A sister. She lives with her sister. Something about that comforts Leo.

“There’s not a whole lot to talk about,” Vanessa says. “All I remember is feeling really drunk and going to the bathroom. Then, I woke up in the hospital.”

Leo has to think about his response before he speaks again. “You can tell your sister how you feel about what happened.”

Vanessa looks down into her lap, suddenly looking very young. “I don’t want her to worry about me any more than she already does.”

Leo moves closer to the bed, until his knees are brushing the mattress. “Is your sister older or younger?”

“Older.”

He smiles. “I’m the oldest brother in my family. Take it from me: worrying is in the older sibling job description.”

Vanessa doesn’t look back up at him or answer. She seems sad and serious now, where before she might’ve been talking about the weather.

Leo sits on the foot of the bed, and the mattress creaking and shifting under his weight brings her attention back to him. He does his best to give her a gentle look.

“Let your sister be there for you,” he says. “You went through something heavy. Just because you avoided the worst, doesn’t mean you have to act like it was nothing.”

Vanessa just continues to look at him without speaking.

Leo offers her a smile, then stands up again. “My brothers and I are going to help the cops find the man who kidnapped you. You have my word that we’ll find him. If you ever need help or if you remember something about what happened that night, please call Detective McGuire and ask for me and my brothers.”

Vanessa nods.

Leo turns toward the window to leave.

“Hey,” she says.

He stops and looks at her over his shoulder.

“Tell Michelangelo that I’ll be grateful to him for the rest of my life.”

A faint smile crosses Leo’s lips, a glow of pride igniting in his gut. He nods at her, then disappears out the window and into the night. 

* * *

The eldest turtle slinks into the lair around 5:15 in the morning, in perfect ninja silence. His home looks just as he left it, which means his family is all still asleep.

“Where have you been?”

Raphael’s deep, rumbling voice actually makes Leo jump in his skin, which is a feat considering how aware Leo is of his surroundings. Raphael steps out of the shadows to the left of the main entrance with a smirk on his face, arms crossed against his plastron.

“What are you even doing up?” says Leo, regaining his composure in a flash. “Your alarm doesn’t go off for another what? Three hours?”

“Never mind why I’m awake,” Raphael says, the smirk now gone and his demeanor serious. “Where were you?”

Leo sighs, moving toward the bedroom corridor and doing his best to be quiet. “I couldn’t sleep and just went to my rooftop spot to think.”

“Bullshit.”

Leo makes it to his bedroom door, hoping his brother will leave him alone, but Raphael is close behind him and follows him inside. The red-banded turtle shuts the door behind him, and Leo continues to act like nothing’s off, keeping his back to Raph as he unbuckles the straps holding his swords to his carapace. He sets the pair of katana in their scabbards on their wall mounts, below the rest of his sword collection.

“Leo,” Raph says, keeping his voice low enough not to wake their other brothers in the neighboring rooms. But Leo can hear the warning in it.

Leo’s tired and emotional and just wants to go to sleep. He hopes his face makes this clear as he turns around to look at Raphael. “Why do you care?” he says. “And why do I have to explain myself to you? I’m an adult. I can go out whenever I want.”

Raphael glares at him, undeterred. “Yeah, you’re thirty years old like the rest of us, and in all that time, you’ve never sneaked out alone at four in the morning. Not even when we were teenagers. Now, we’re going after sex traffickers, and all of sudden, you gotta leave the lair without any of us knowing? I’m not stupid, Leo.”

“I wasn’t out there looking for traffickers. We all agreed we wouldn’t work this mission alone. I keep my word, Raph.”

“Then you got no reason to hide what you were doing,” says Raphael.

Leo sits down on the bed and looks at the floor, his hands in his lap. “Fine,” he says. “I went to go see Vanessa.”

“ _What?_ ”

Leo glances at his brother. “You heard me.”

“Did she actually see you?” Raphael says.

“Yes,” Leo replies. “We spoke.”

“You’ve gotta be kidding. Leo, what the fuck? What were you thinking? She could start telling people about you, and then how the hell are we going to get anywhere with this mission?”

“She’s not going to say anything. She’s not stupid. She didn’t even freak out when she saw me. She invited me into her room. Max told her about us….”

“Jesus Christ,” says Raphael, almost hissing in a loud whisper.

“We’ll talk to her later,” Leo says. “The point is, we don’t have to worry about Vanessa. I wanted to make sure she was doing okay, and I did. Can I go to bed now?”

“If any of the rest of us pulled something like this, it’d be the end of the fucking world according to you, but I’m supposed to just be okay with the fact you did it? Without talking to us first?”

Leo doesn’t answer, growing more tired by the minute. He’s usually dead asleep at this time, just an hour away from waking for his morning meditation. His whole schedule for the day is going to be off now.

“Don’t you think Mikey wants to go see the woman?” Raphael continues. “He’s the one who saved her and risked his tail to do it. If he’d asked your permission to go see her, you would’ve shut him down.”

“Raph,” Leo says. “Please, just—I don’t want to fight with you.” Something shifts inside the eldest turtle and emotion rises in his voice with his next words. “I don’t want to fight with you ever again.”

He looks over at Raphael, their eyes meeting, and the red-banded turtle is caught off guard by Leo’s weary sadness. All of Raphael’s indignation drains out of his face, his posture, and he considers his brother with curiosity and concern. He takes a few steps closer, as if prompting Leo to explain himself, but Leo just looks back at the floor.

Raphael ventures to join his brother on the bed, sitting close enough on Leo’s left that they brush against each other.

“You were worried about me,” Leo says. He’s old enough and smart enough to recognize when Raphael’s confrontational attitude is a mask for some form of fear.

“Yeah,” Raphael says, his voice suddenly soft. “How could I not be?”

“You could just tell me that, you know. Instead of trying to pick a fight about something else.”

Raphael doesn’t reply.

Leo shuts his eyes, tired but also overwhelmed with a mix of feelings he only partially understands.

“Are you okay?” Raphael says.

Leo can tell his brother’s asking after his mental and emotional states. He cracks his eyes open and says, “I don’t want to fight again. I want us to be in harmony. I hate fighting with you, I always have.”

Raphael pauses before murmuring, “Me too.”

After a moment, Leo says, “She’s got a sister. Vanessa. They live together.”

Raphael doesn’t respond, unsure what’s going on with his brother and what he’s supposed to do.

Leo turns toward Raphael, deciding to risk rejection, and lays his head on the other turtle’s shoulder.

“Leo?” Raphael says, immediately leaning into his brother and wrapping his arm around Leo’s shoulders. “Hey…”

Leo snakes his arm around Raphael’s carapace and rests more of his weight onto the other turtle. He doesn’t know what’s going on with him. He just wants to be comforted, to feel close to Raphael.

“You remember when we first met April and the Foot jumped you at her old apartment above the antique store? We took you to the farm house, and you didn’t wake up for days.”

“That was a lifetime ago,” says Raphael.

“I think about it whenever we have a real fight,” Leo says. “I swore to myself back then I would never use my words to hurt you again.”

The confession goes straight to Raphael’s heart, and he cups Leo’s face in his hand, hugging him closer. He has no idea where all this is coming from, what’s got his most emotionally reserved brother talking to him like this, but he can’t help responding to Leo’s vulnerability with tenderness.

“Donnie told me about what the three of you are going to try doing,” Raphael says, speaking softly enough for only Leo to hear. “The relationship experiment. He asked me if I wanted to join in, and I said yeah.”

Leo’s got his eyes closed again. He could almost fall asleep right here, leaning against his brother. “Guess that means I can tell you I love you,” he says.

Raphael strokes Leo’s cheek with his thumb and rests his head against Leo’s. He swallows and says, “I love you too.”

Leo hesitates, then says, “Will you stay with me? While I sleep?”

“Yeah, of course. Of course, I will.”

They lie down in Leo’s bed on their sides, facing each other. Leo curls up against Raphael, his face Raphael’s chest and his arms folded between them. Raphael lays his arm over Leo’s, his hand on his brother’s shoulder.

* * *

Donnie and Mikey go looking for their brothers after Raph and Leo miss breakfast, right before morning training begins. They pop their heads into Leo’s room and find their two older brothers still snoozing together in bed.

Wide smiles spread across Donnie and Mikey’s faces.

“Aw, man, this is like the cutest they’ve ever been,” Mikey whispers. “I don’t want to wake them up.”

“We’ll let them skip practice for once,” says Donnie.

“We should totally get a picture.” 

“They would kill us if we did.” 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Buckle up, this chapter gets violent!
> 
> Thanks for the reviews so far. I would love to hear more from readers who are following this fic about what you like and what you think in general.

Eighteen days go by. Mikey describes the runaway trafficker to a police sketch artist over the phone, and the drawing is accurate enough that he shivers when he finally sees it. Gallego lawyers up and refuses to talk to the cops, much less identify his associate who got away. The credit card receipts at the bar where Vanessa was drugged are a bust. McGuire gives a copy of the suspect sketch to the bar so they can alert her if they see the man come in. She doesn’t get any calls about him.

Donnie finally gets a hold of security camera footage from the route between the bar and the alley where Vanessa was traded off. It takes him two days to decipher a possible license plate number on the mystery man’s van, and even then, he’s guessing half the characters. He passes them on to McGuire on a Wednesday and doesn’t hear back from her until the following Monday. She sends him a list of names and MVD photos, despite not all the plates belonging to black vans. 

Mikey stops Donatello on the third photograph: a thirty-five year old white man with sandy blonde hair and a full goatee. Paul Wheeler.

“That’s him,” Mikey says, pointing at the computer screen.

“You sure?” says Donnie. He doesn’t want to send McGuire on a pointless chase.

“I’m sure. That’s definitely him.”

McGuire brings Wheeler in for questioning but doesn’t get anything out of him that can justify any arrest. She doesn’t even have enough cause to ask for a search warrant on the van. She tells the turtles and herself that getting Gallego to flip on Wheeler in exchange for a plea deal is a good possibility; she just needs to set up a meeting with Gallego and his lawyer after getting the prosecutor’s office on board.

What she doesn’t count on is Donnie tracking down Paul Wheeler’s address and Leo deciding to lead his brothers right to him. Leo tells Donnie, Raph, and Mikey that they’re just going to follow him around, get a feel for his trafficking activity, and maybe scare him face to face if it makes sense.

They watch his apartment building for a few nights, taking note of his comings and goings. Two turtles on the roof, two in their ’95 Ford Bronco parked across the street from the building. Each night, he stays out until after one a.m., coming home alone. By then, his street is quiet enough that the turtles could jump him without being seen, especially if they pulled him into one of the alleys next to his building.

But instead, on the fourth night, Leo tells Donnie to follow Wheeler as soon as they see him leave home around eight-thirty. He’s sitting in shotgun, with Raphael and Mikey in the back as usual. Donnie pulls the Bronco out into the street and tails the man carefully for a few blocks, he and his brothers all hoping Wheeler doesn’t take the subway someplace.

Lucky for them, he walks the whole way to a club six blocks south and four blocks east. The Matchstick. They see him go in and drive around to the back of the club, parking at a safe distance from the exit. Raph and Mikey take the roof, keeping an eye on the club’s main entrance in case Wheeler leaves through it, while Donnie and Leo stay in the Bronco and hope he comes out the back door alone.

An hour passes before the club door swings open on squeaky hinges—and Paul Wheeler steps out by himself.

“It’s him!” Donnie whispers.

Wheeler makes a phone call on his cell phone that Donnie and Leo can’t hear much of, then breaks out a cigarette.

“Stay here until I need you,” Leo says, climbing into the back of the Bronco and slipping carefully out of the rear window.

He sneaks into a strategic hiding spot near Wheeler, who doesn’t seem to notice anything moving in the darkness around him.

Donnie watches, holding his breath without realizing it.

“Hey, buddy,” Leo says from his hiding place. “Got a light?”

Wheeler turns to look in the direction of his voice and doesn’t have time to see Leo coming. The blue-banded turtle throttles him to the ground and punches him in the face, knocking his head into the cement. He yanks the black bag out of his belt and pulls it over Wheeler’s head, then lifts the man up onto his feet. 

Donnie gets out of the Bronco and runs to help his brother, whistling for Raph and Mikey as he goes.

Leo slams Wheeler against the alley’s back wall, pinning him with an elbow in the man’s upper back. “Donnie, get his wrists,” he says.

Donnie pulls the man’s hands behind his back and binds his wrists with rope.

Raphael and Mikey hit the ground on the other side of the alley and jog up to join their brothers.

“Is he conscious?” Mikey says.

“Not quite,” Leo replies. “We need to hurry up and get out of here.”

“Give him to me,” says Raph.

Leo hands the man over to Raph, who drags him around to the back of the Bronco and hauls him inside.

The turtles take the man to an empty, unfinished building not far from Wheeler’s address that they’ve had picked out for days, sneaking in through a side door and forcing Wheeler into the elevator. They take him to the seventh floor and put him on his knees in the circle of light that the one illuminated bulb casts down, only then removing the bag from Wheeler’s head.

The man blinks several times, taking in the turtles’ faces. “What the hell are you?”

“Your worst nightmare, asshole,” says Raph. 

“It doesn’t matter who or what we are,” Leo tells the man. “This isn’t about us. It’s about you.”

“Is this about the drugs? Because I paid exactly what the doc asked for last time and he said we didn’t owe him anything. And since when are dealers making their lackeys walk around in matching costumes?”

“Of course he buys drugs,” Donnie says to his brothers. “Probably what he used on Vanessa.”

Raphael punches Wheeler in the face left-right, then steps back to let Leo address the man. Wheeler groans and curses. 

“We know you’re the one who drugged and kidnapped a woman from The Locked Bar a few weeks ago,” Leo says. “You tried passing her onto a man named Ricky Gallego. But my brother there in the orange stopped him and saved her. He saw you—and you saw him.”

“I’m telling you, you got the wrong guy,” Wheeler says. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I promise I won’t tell anyone about this if you let me go.”

Leo slaps Wheeler across the face, almost knocking him over. “Stop lying! We know it was you!”

Michelangelo takes a couple steps closer to the man, his chucks in his hands. His whole body is tense. He looks right at Wheeler, who only glances at him before averting his eyes.

“I saw you in the van, dude,” Mikey says. “And I know you saw me. Had your headlights shining right on me.”

“It wasn’t me,” Wheeler mumbles, guilt all through his body language.

“This might go easier for you if you tell us the truth,” Leo warns.

Wheeler doesn’t respond, looking at the ground off his right shoulder.

“We want to know who else you’re working with,” Leo says. “Who you’re selling women to and who you’re buying from if you buy them too.”

Silence.

Raphael steps into Wheeler’s personal space again and throws a left hook at his face, sending him to the floor. “You answer my brother when he asks you a question!” he yells.

Donnie lingers behind his brothers, holding his bo upright with both hands, looking uneasy.

Wheeler coughs and sputters on the floor, trying and failing to roll on his back despite his hands bound there. He’s already bruising from Raphael’s fists, and the turtles are just getting started.

“Get him up,” Leo says to Raphael in a quiet tone. “On his feet.”

Raphael hauls Wheeler to stand before Leo and Mikey, then steps back to join Donnie.

“Who do you work with in the trafficking industry?” Leo says to Wheeler, looking at him dead in the eye. His voice is steady, not at all raised, with a dangerous edge to it.

Wheeler doesn’t dare look away from him as he squirms under Leo’s scrutiny.

“Are you a boss or just a grunt?” Leo continues. “You don’t seem like a boss to me.”

“Definitely not,” says Mikey.

“Bosses don’t get their hands dirty.” Leo steps up close enough for Wheeler to feel his breath hot on his face. “Who’s your boss?”

Wheeler doesn’t answer, and Leo only waits a few seconds before punching him hard in the gut, sending him to his knees with a groan.

“Answer the question,” Leo says, looking down at the man. “Or we’ll break bones you don’t even know you have.”

Wheeler’s shaking a little, his head hanging low. If it hasn’t already dawned on him that he’s screwed, it probably is now. “I don’t know his real name,” he says. “Everybody I know just calls him the Boogie Man.”

“Well, that’s original,” Mikey quips, but there’s no humor in his voice.

“He’s the boss?” Leo says to Wheeler. “The one in charge?”

Wheeler nods. “Yeah. He makes all the deals and he has his own set of girls he pimps out all over the city.”

“Selling Vanessa to Gallego, was that one of Boogie’s deals?”

“No,” Wheeler says. “I set that up on my own.”

“How did you meet Gallego?”

“The internet. I wanted to see if I could set up and pull off a sale on my own. He said he was an independent buyer. I thought it would be easy.”

“You didn’t count on me showing up to go ninja on your ass,” Mikey replies.

“So he didn’t want one night with a prostitute….” Leo says, as the truth takes shape in his mind.

“He wanted a slave,” says Donnie. “A woman he could keep hostage…. for sex.”

Raphael charges at Wheeler, Leo and Mikey backing away from them, and delivers a roundhouse kick to Wheeler’s head. The man topples to the floor again, and Raph is on top of him, pressing the tip of one sai under Wheeler’s chin. “What kind of sick fuck are you?” he says, voice raised now. “Huh? How much was he going to pay you? A couple grand? You were going to let that motherfucker rape a woman over and over for a couple grand?”

Raph’s brothers can all sense that he’s about to kill the man. Leo and Donnie go to peel him off Wheeler, each of them taking one of Raph’s shoulders and coaxing him to his feet. Raphael allows himself to be moved, stepping backward away from Wheeler, gripping his sai. Donnie takes him over, standing in between Raphael and the man with his hand on Raph’s shoulder, while Leo pulls Wheeler back up onto his knees.

Wheeler looks dazed, half-conscious, probably concussed. His face is mottled with raw, red abrasions and bruises, and a little blood oozes out of his right nostril. 

“Do you admit to raping women, in the Boogie Man’s possession and otherwise?” Leo says to him, his voice cold and hard.

Wheeler doesn’t answer, his eyes unfocused and his lips slightly parted.

Mikey steps forward, grabs him by his hair at the back of his head, jerks his head back. “Answer the question,” he says, in a tone his brothers can’t remember ever hearing from him.

The man looks up at the orange-banded turtle, mouth hanging open, and doesn’t speak at first.

The brothers all already know what the answer is—but Leo asked the question because he won’t allow his enemies to deny their wrongdoing.

Wheeler swallows, his white throat exposed to Mikey. He works his mouth, then says, “Yes.”

Mikey glares at him, anger burning in his belly like a hot coal. He lets the man go with a rough gesture and steps back until he’s just behind Leo on his brother’s right.

“You done playing twenty questions with this scum bag?” Raphael says to Leo. “Let’s fucking end him.”

“I’ll confess,” says Wheeler, despair now surfacing on his face. “Take me to the cops. I’ll tell them everything. I’ll them about Gallego and Boogie and how I drugged that girl…. Please.”

“Donatello,” Leo says, his eyes fixed on the man. “Gag him.”

Donnie lets go of Raph and goes to retrieve the duct tape he packed in the small knap sack he brought. Leo asked him to bring it along with the rope to bind Wheeler. Donnie presses a piece of tape over Wheeler’s mouth, and the man starts to whine, tears in his eyes. All Leo can think as he looks down into the man’s face is what a coward he is.

“Everybody stand at least six feet away from him,” he says to his brothers, his voice even.

Donnie and Raph obey him, and Mikey moves to join them.

Leo positions himself next to Wheeler’s left shoulder, draws one of his katana, and grips the handle in both hands. He holds the blade pointed down in front of him, unmoved by the man’s desperate, wild eyes. His mind goes as quiet as it does when he meditates. He can hear his own heart beating quick in his chest. He doesn’t look at his brothers and doesn’t hear them make a sound.

“What you have done is unforgivable,” Leo says to Wheeler. “On behalf of your victims, I purge you now from this world.”

He lifts the katana—sharpened earlier today—and swings it from behind the man, slicing clean through his neck in one swift motion. The head hits the floor before the body slumps forward, blood gushing from the carotid artery in the neck and leaking from the head.

The blade glints in the white light, stained bright red with hot blood. Leo pulls the cloth he tied around his belt and wipes the blade clean, then sheathes it again in its scabbard. He looks down at himself to check for blood splatter on his body but doesn’t see any.

When he looks up, he sees his brothers stepping out of the shadows to approach him, all of them looking a little shocked. Leo doesn’t feel anything. Not remorse or shame or fear or satisfaction.

“We’ll leave him here for McGuire and the cops,” he tells his brothers. “Let’s go.”

He gives Wheeler’s body a wide berth as he starts to make his way toward them and the elevators.

On the way home, the turtles don’t speak until they’ve almost reached the lair.

“What do we tell Master Splinter?” Mikey says in a hushed voice.

“The truth,” Leo replies at the head of the line. “I’ll tell him.”

But their father is asleep when they enter the lair, most of the lights switched off for the night. The turtles half-expected Splinter to wait up for them, though he had no reason to do so given they didn’t tell him they were going to ambush Wheeler.

Donnie, Raph, and Mikey suddenly feel lost once in the lair, not the least bit tired. What are they supposed to do? What is there to say?

Leo doesn’t wait for them, heading straight for the showers. He strips himself of his swords and leather, his mask, and leaves everything in a pile on one of the shelves just outside the showers. He turns the water on, letting it hit his feet cold as he waits for it to heat up. The adrenaline rush has almost worn off now, and where a calm emptiness used to be, he starts to feel something else he can’t name.

He steps into the stream of hot water and just stands there, letting the shower head wash away whatever tiny speckles of blood that might’ve hit him and the events of the night. He lays his hands on the shower wall and hangs his head, the water streaming over his shell.

He feels alone. That, he recognizes. An aloneness he has never felt before, the kind he has always secretly feared.

He finally reaches for the soap and starts to wash himself clean, thinking of how he must disinfect his katana blade tomorrow. Will the sword feel different in his hands now?

When Leo reemerges from the shower, his brothers are waiting for him in the little corridor. He didn’t expect them to be there, and they jolt him out of his thoughts and feelings. They’re looking at him with a quiet concern, still dressed and armed.

He doesn’t know what to say to them. Except: “Get some sleep.”

He heads for his own bedroom before they can think of a response, leaving his swords and gear and mask behind him.

* * *

This time, they meet McGuire on the top floor of another empty building that’s under construction, the darkness of it broken only by her flashlight. It’s late enough that she’s not dressed in her work clothes. She’s wearing a baggy, black hoodie, dark blue pants, and sneakers. If she’s got her badge on her, it isn’t visible.

“This better be worth my time,” she says when she arrives, shining her light onto the four ninja turtles who lurk in the dark.

Raphael comes forward and hands her a slip of paper with an address on it. “That’s where you’ll find Paul Wheeler’s body. Brace yourself because it ain’t pretty.”

McGuire takes the note and looks at the address. “I didn’t give you permission to kill anyone,” she says.

“Yeah, well,” Raph says. “You’re not in charge of us. So we don’t need your permission.”

She sticks the note into her hoodie’s front pocket and leaves that hand in it, lifting her chin in a defiant pose while pointing the flashlight at the turtles. “You go around killing every trafficker you meet, that might make you feel better, but it could also fuck up NYPD and federal investigations into the larger networks these men are a part of. Not to mention: with enough bodies, my fellow cops are going to start looking for who’s responsible.”

“We’re aware,” Leonardo says, from behind Raphael. He takes a few steps toward McGuire, enough to put himself in her view. “We’re not going on a killing spree. In the future, we’ll communicate with you in advance if we plan on executing a target. Unless you don’t want to know.”

“I’ll get back to you on that,” McGuire says, after a pause.

“Before we killed Wheeler, we did get some information out of him. He was working with a pimp named Boogie Man. Trying to sell Vanessa off to Gallego was a side deal. He said he—he’d raped some of the women he kidnapped. But you already knew that.”

McGuire stands there as stone-faced as always. “I haven’t heard of Boogie before. I’ll look into him. You got anything else?”

Leo shakes his head, suddenly feeling like a failure.

“Do yourselves a favor,” she says, taking a few steps back. “Don’t go back to the crime scene. Ever.”

She turns around, taking the light with her, and disappears into the elevator.

* * *

The brothers return to the lair in noticeable silence, scattering to their respective preferred areas of isolation. Leo heads into Master Splinter’s room to report on the meeting with McGuire, the task of briefing their father always falling on him. Donnie heads into his lab, Raphael to his weights, and Mikey to the sofa in front of the TV.

Donnie sits in his lab chair and lets his mind wander, half-listening for Leo re-emerging out of Splinter’s room. When he hears the distant sound of his sensei’s door opening and closing and his brother’s footfalls through the lair, Donnie gets up without knowing what exactly he wants or plans on.

Leo’s already reached the turtles’ bedroom corridor when Donnie pokes his head out of the lab. Donnie can’t see his face as he quietly starts toward him, but he can tell by Leo’s gait that the blue-banded turtle is just as tense as he was on the way home.

Leo disappears into his room, and Donnie stops in his tracks, still not knowing what he’s after. Does he just want to talk to one of his brothers right now to avoid being alone? Is he picking up on Leo’s emotions that need addressing? Does he want to talk one-on-one with Leo about the killing? He doesn’t even know what to say about it. None of the turtles have talked about the execution with each other outside of their meeting with McGuire.

Donnie stops outside of Leo’s bedroom door and listens for any noise inside before knocking. “Leo?” he says. “Can we talk?”

No answer. Donnie considers leaving and letting Leo come to him, then decides to be a little pushy instead. He opens the door and steps into his eldest brother’s room, eyes widening.

Leo’s on his knees with his hands braced against his mattress, tears streaming down his face. His breathing is rapid and shallow; the sound of it scares Donnie before he can process what’s going on.

“Leo!” Donnie cries and rushes to his brother’s side. “Leo, what’s wrong?”

Leo glances at Donnie but doesn’t let go of the bed. He shuts his eyes and whimpers.

“Leo, talk to me!” Donnie says, his fear escalating by the second. He’s got his hand on Leo’s shoulder now. “Are you in pain?”

Leo shakes his head. Donnie can feel his brother’s body vibrating under his hand. The eldest turtle gasps for breath as if he can’t get any, almost wheezing. 

Then, it hits him: Leo’s having a panic attack. All of the symptoms fit. He’s never had one before, to Donnie’s knowledge, though the eldest turtle has been anxious since they were young. Donnie wasn’t sure he and his brothers could have one, considering there’s no documentation on panic in wild turtles. But Leo’s too young and healthy for a heart attack or any other major medical event that could explain the symptoms Donnie’s seeing.

Donnie’s fear evaporates in an instant, and he shifts gears into doctor mode.

“Hey,” he says in a softer voice, inching closer to Leo on his knees and loosening his grip on Leo’s shoulder. “Leo, I think you’re having a panic attack. I’m going to stay with you and help you get through it, okay?”

Leo nods, opening his eyes again and staring at the space between his own hands on the edge of his mattress.

“Why don’t you turn and face me?” says Donnie. “I think that’ll help.”

Leo swallows. “I can’t feel my hands,” he says. His voice is broken and pained in between shallow breaths. “Donnie—”

“It’s okay.” Donnie scoots even closer to Leo, his hand sliding onto his brother’s carapace and rubbing. “That happens sometimes during hyperventilation. It’s temporary. I promise. We just need to slow your breathing down. Come on.”

Leo slowly lets go of the bed and turns toward Donnie, who moves to face his brother. Leo’s shaking visibly now. Donnie’s never seen his blue-banded brother tremble like this before, not even close, and it’s so jarring, he’s tempted to just wrap Leo in his arms until it stops. 

“Put your hands on my shoulders,” Donnie says. He takes Leo’s hands in his and lifts them to his own shoulders. “There you go. Squeeze all you want. I can take it.”

“They’re still numb,” Leo pants. “Donnie, why is this happening?”

Donnie hushes his brother, resting his hands on Leo’s thighs and rubbing his thumbs into the taut flesh. “I’m going to count for you, so you can slow your breathing. Three in, four out, okay? And go as slow as you can. Look at me, Leo.”

Leo lifts his eyes to Donnie’s, and Donnie knows how hard that is for him when he’s crying. Donnie gives him a gentle smile.

“Guys?” Raph says from the doorway. “What the hell is going on?”

Leo doesn’t take his eyes off Donnie, and Donnie doesn’t physically acknowledge Raphael’s presence.

Raphael swoops to his brothers’ sides, kneeling next to Leo.

“He’s having a panic attack,” Donnie says in an even voice, holding steady eye contact with Leo. “It’s not a big deal. We’re going to get him through it. Just gotta help him slow down his breathing.”

Raphael looks from Donnie to Leo, bewildered and helpless.

“Raph, you can rub his shell,” Donnie tells him. 

Raphael, who always wants to feel useful, immediately obeys and starts to run his hand from the top of Leo’s carapace to the bottom in long strokes. Leo shudders, leaning forward with his hands on Donnie’s shoulders.

“Woah!” says Mikey from the doorway, then scuttles into the room to join his brothers. “Leo? What’s wrong?”

Leo swallows again and makes eye contact with his youngest brother, as if wanting to reassure him. But he doesn’t try to speak.

“He’ll be okay, Mikey,” Donnie says. “Do me a favor and go get a glass of ice.”

“On it!” Mikey says and runs out of the room.

“All right, Leo. Here we go. Breathe in. One. Two. Three.”

Leo follows Donnie’s count, and Donnie starts breathing with him, their eyes locked.

“Breathe out. Four. Three. Two. One.”

Mikey comes back, sitting next to Donnie with the glass of ice cubes in his hand.

“Breathe in,” Donnie says again. “One. Two. Three. Breathe out. Four. Three. Two. One. That’s it, Leo. You know how to do this.”

Leo’s still shaking, but his tears have almost stopped. He grips Donnie’s shoulders with plenty of strength, probably more than he realizes because they’re numb. Donnie continues to rub Leo’s thighs with his thumbs and looks into his brother’s eyes as if it’s just the two of them in the world.

“Breathe in. One. Two. Three. Breathe out. Four. Three. Two. One.”

Raphael starts to murmur to Leo, his face near his brother’s ear, so quiet that Donnie and Mikey can’t hear him that well. “I’m here, Leo. We’re all here. We’ve got you. Just follow Don.” 

For the next few minutes, the only sound in the room is Donnie’s voice and his and Leo’s breathing. Raph strokes Leo’s shell without ceasing, and Mikey sits with his brothers, watching Leo and waiting for Donnie to tell him what to do with the ice.

After who knows how many breaths, Donnie reads Leo’s face and pauses. “Should we keep going or do you feel better?” he says.

“I think it’s over,” Leo replies, looking exhausted. He leans the rest of the way forward and rests his head against Donnie’s plastron, hands still on Donnie’s shoulders.

Raphael’s hand is still on Leo’s carapace, and he and Donnie share a look.

“Mikey, why don’t you give Leo an ice cube now?” says Donnie. “Come on, Leo. Sit up.”

Mikey picks a cube out of the glass and offers it to Leo, who takes it and puts it in his mouth.

“Suck on that, don’t chew it,” Donnie tells him.

Now that Leo has let go of the purple-banded turtle, Mikey takes his hand and offers his big brother an encouraging smile. Donnie keeps his hands on Leo’s thighs.

“Your hands back to normal?” he says.

Leo nods.

“Someone wanna tell me what’s going on?” Mikey says.

“Leo had a panic attack,” says Donnie. “I’m not sure what triggered it.”

“Nothing,” says Leo, his voice quiet and tired. He’s still trembling a little. “I just came in here to be alone and think and sharpen my swords. I was fine. Then, I wasn’t.”

The swords, Donnie thinks. They might’ve set Leo off.

Leo pops another ice cube into his mouth and doesn’t let go of Mikey’s hand. He almost never relies on Mikey for comfort or support. Mikey’s quietly desperate not to do anything to make him pull away. 

Donnie debates with himself over whether to talk this out with Leo now or put him to bed. He decides his blue-banded brother is more likely to be open with the rest of them now than he will be tomorrow.

“Why don’t I go get the futon mats, and we can all sleep in here tonight?” Donnie says, continuing to speak in a gentle tone.

Leo nods, looking at him again.

Donnie leaves the room, and Mikey moves into his spot right in front of Leo, hand still in Leo’s and cup of ice cubes held on his knee. Raphael moves over to Leo’s side and lays his hand on Leo’s shoulder. Leo won’t look at either of them, suddenly feeling exposed and maybe a little ashamed.

“I’m glad you’re okay, dude,” Mikey tells his eldest brother.

“Yeah, thank god for Donnie’s encyclopedic knowledge of how to solve problems,” says Raph.

“I can’t believe you know the word _encyclopedic_ ,” Leo says.

Raph smiles.

The turtles line up the four mats on the bedroom floor, Leo takes the pillows and blanket off his bed for himself, and the others take the pillows and blankets Donnie retrieved from their stock pile of bedding. Raphael lies on Leo’s right and Donnie on his left. Mikey’s sleeping spot is on Donnie’s other side, but he temporarily flops onto the floor above his brothers’ heads so he can touch Leo, scraping his fingers against Leo’s head. Raphael curls around Leo’s carapace, wrapping his arm around Leo’s waist, and Donnie faces Leo, holding his brother’s hand in both of his and looking at him. Leo’s taken off his mask, and he looks younger and more vulnerable.

“Talk to us, Leo,” Mikey says.

“I don’t know what to say,” Leo replies, after a moment. “I thought I was fine. It’s not like Wheeler is the first enemy we’ve killed.”

“First one you’ve killed like that,” says Donnie.

“It’s been two days. If it was really about what I did, wouldn’t I have panicked right after?”

“Not necessarily.”

Leo looks away from Donnie, but Donnie continues to stare at his face.

“Maybe you didn’t freak out over the kill,” Raphael says, resting against Leo’s shell. “Maybe you’re afraid of what might happen now that you done it.”

The slightest tell on Leo’s face confirms to Donnie that Raphael hit a nerve.

“You gotta be honest with us, bro,” says Mikey. “We agreed we wouldn’t keep secrets, remember?”

“I—” Leo starts. “I just—”

Donnie rubs his thumb over the back of Leo’s hand that he’s got clasped between his own. “You can tell us,” he says.

“I’m afraid what I did will push you all away from me,” says Leo. “That you’re disgusted or—or scared of me.”

“Do you feel that way about yourself?” Donnie replies.

Leo looks at him. “I don’t know,” he says.

Raphael runs his hand over the rim of Leo’s carapace before curling his arm around Leo’s waist again. “I don’t feel any different about you, Leo,” he says. 

“Yeah, me neither,” says Mikey. “If you hadn’t cut off that guy’s head, I would’ve.”

“You did what we all knew we’d eventually have to do,” Donnie says to Leo. “And you did it so that we wouldn’t have to.” 

Leo just looks into Donnie’s eyes, absorbing his brothers’ acceptance.

“It’s not always going to be you performing the execution,” says Mikey, his voice quieter and contemplative. He rubs the back of Leo’s neck now with one hand.

“Mikey’s right,” says Donnie. “If we’re going to kill these men, we have to divide that burden equally.”

“Next time, it’s my turn,” Raphael says, without any heat in his tone. He’s relaxed, holding onto Leo. Starting to get sleepy, even.

“I don’t know if I want you guys doing what I did,” Leo says softly.

Donnie reaches over and traces around Leo’s right eye with his thumb, along the eye ridge and down to his cheek. “Typical Leo,” he says, with fondness. “Always trying to protect us.”

“You won’t know how the act will affect you until you do it. Maybe you think you can handle it… but what if you can’t?”

“We can handle it,” says Raphael. “With each other’s help.”

“I think it’s a good idea to come up with an aftercare plan,” Donnie says. “And to take an appropriate break in between operations that involve death.”

“Aftercare?”

“Yeah. That’s what we’re doing right now for Leo. It shouldn’t have taken a panic attack to get us here. We need to look out for each other’s mental health, now more than ever.”

“Leo really needs to learn how to ask for help,” says Mikey before he breaks into a yawn.

“In my defense, I didn’t know I needed any,” Leo replies.

Donnie’s still cupping Leo’s cheek and looking at his brother, holding Leo’s hand. “You’re a ninja, Leo. Not a machine. It’s okay that you need time to process what you did. It’s okay if you struggle with it.”

“I don’t regret it.”

“But it can still stress you out.”

Leo doesn’t reply. He closes his eyes and just feels the weight and touch and presence of his brothers all around him. This is what he was most scared of losing. He was afraid that something had been irreparably broken between him and his brothers the minute he beheaded that man, that he had lost their trust somehow, that they would look at him differently. 

“All right, bro,” says Mikey. “Time for me to crash.”

He leans down and kisses Leo’s head, before getting up and settling in his sleep spot next to Donnie. He flings his arm around his purple-banded brother, snuggling up to Donnie’s carapace, and Donnie smiles.

Leo starts to move closer to Donnie, and Donnie opens his arms. Leo rests his brow against Donnie’s plastron, Raph following him and hanging on. Donnie curls his arm around Leo’s shoulders.

“We love you,” he whispers to the eldest turtle. 

The four brothers sleep in their pile until morning. 

* * *

Early the next day, Splinter’s pouring hot tea out of his favorite ceramic tea pot into two matching cups when Leo knocks. The blue-banded turtle pops his head into his father’s room. 

“Sensei?” Leo says. “Can we talk?”

The old rat glances at his eldest son and sets the tea pot down on the table. “I was expecting you. Come in and sit down.”

Leo quietly enters his father’s room and sits on one of the floor cushions at the table, next to Splinter. Splinter pushes one of the tea cups over to Leo, and Leo dips his head in gratitude as he takes the cup in both hands.

“Your energy is calmer today,” Splinter says.

“I do feel better,” Leo replies. “I—I was upset last night, and the others comforted me. It helped.”

“The attack you and your brothers carried out greatly disturbed you. I cannot remember the last time a mission or an encounter with an enemy knocked you so far off balance. It gives me some peace of mind to know you’re now somewhat recovered.”

“I didn’t realize how much our operation affected me until last night…. I thought I was strong enough to handle carrying out a righteous assassination. I haven’t told the others this, but I owe you the truth, Master Splinter. I feel weak. Despite all my experience and everything I know about the man I killed, the act of executing him has affected me mentally and emotionally in a way that I can’t make sense of. It makes me second guess my ability to pursue the mission….”

Splinter reaches over and lays his hand on Leonardo’s arm, prompting Leo to lift his head and look at his father.

“Leonardo,” Splinter says. “As usual, you are too hard on yourself. Your expectations were unrealistic. Yes, you have taken the lives of your enemies in battle before, as have your brothers. But to slay an opponent in a fight is very different than to execute an unarmed enemy the way you did the other night. You had never committed such an act before. It is natural that doing so would provoke many difficult emotions. Your training, your experience, and even the knowledge of the man’s evil deeds could not have prevented all that you have felt since taking his life. You are a ninja, a warrior, but you are not a cold-blooded killer. Nor are your brothers. The man you killed posed no threat to your life or the lives of your brothers. That is why killing him feels different to you than your previous lethal victories in battle.”

Leo gathers the courage to maintain eye contact with Splinter as he answers: “I don’t feel guilt, Sensei. I almost wonder if that means something is wrong with me…. If I regret taking that man’s life the way I did, it is only because I’m afraid it will change who I am in your eyes. How my brothers see me….”

He drops his gaze again, deathly afraid of his father’s rejection.

But Splinter does not pull his hand back from Leo’s arm.

“Leonardo,” he says, his voice gentle and raspy. A touch of sadness is there too. “You have answered a calling higher than yourself to vanquish evil in this city. Your intentions, your motivations are pure and good. You are not the darkness you have sought to defeat all your life. What you have done, you did with honor.”

Splinter lifts his hand to cup Leo’s face, and Leo closes his eyes.

“For this, your brothers and I could never lose our respect or trust in you.”

Leo exhales in relief, emotion welling up in him. He looks at Splinter again, his eyes stinging.

“Do you understand, my son?” Splinter says.

“Yes,” Leo replies. “Thank you, Sensei.”

They drink their tea in silence for a minute or two, allowing the intensity of their feelings to subside.

“You must allow your brothers to carry you as you have always carried them,” Splinter says.

“I know,” says Leo. “That was made clear to me last night.”

“Good. You may think that needing their love to temper the burden of your new mission is a sign of weakness—but in their love, you will find the strength you need to answer this calling.”

Leo nods.

* * *

That night, after the others have all gone to bed, Donnie’s listening to music in his lab and thinking about his brothers when Raphael slips into the room. The red-banded turtle doesn’t come further in than the doorway, and Donnie looks over at him.

“I’m gonna go for a walk,” Raph says. “You wanna join me?”

Donnie has never been one for late night roaming, but Raphael has never asked for his company on one of his own outings.

“Yeah, actually,” says Donnie. “I could use some fresh air.”

Raph nods and slips back out of the room, Donnie not far behind him.

They don’t wear disguises, though they probably should. But it’s late enough that Raphael’s emboldened to walk undisguised on the street. He doesn’t do it often, but every once in a while, he takes the risk and feels freer for it.

They stick to allies and side streets, making their way east until they hit the walkway alongside the Harlem River. The traffic whirring behind them on FDR Drive is as light as it ever gets. The water ripples and stretches before them in a cold, black sheet. Raphael takes a deep breath in a way Donnie rarely sees, so Donnie takes one too. The air is cleaner out here, near the water. The stars twinkle above them, so few visible compared to how many Donnie knows are there. If he could ever leave New York, he’d like to go someplace without any light pollution and see the night sky as it was meant to be seen. He realizes Raphael doesn’t know that—they’ve never talked about where they would go or what they would with unrestricted access to the world, seriously, one on one.

“You come here a lot?” says Donnie.

“I don’t know about a lot,” Raph replies. “It’s one of my spots. The Hudson’s just as nice, better even.”

When they were teenagers, Donnie never gave any thought to Raphael’s solo outings. He figured Raphael needed the space and time away from the family because his brothers annoyed him or because he argued with Leo every other day or because some part of him wanted to live a normal, human life topside.

But Raphael grew up and settled down, shedding much of his anger and irritability. He stopped running away from the lair after arguments with his brothers, but he didn’t stop going out alone at least once a week. Far more than any of the other turtles do. It’s only now that Donnie realizes maybe Raphael has been using his time alone above ground to be introspective, something Donnie and their brothers would never imagine Raphael being.

“You were really good with Leo last night,” says Raph, looking out at the water. He stands next to Donnie leaning his elbows on the metal rail fencing the edge of the walkway.

“Thanks,” Donnie says, looking away from his brother. Personalized compliments have always made him feel bashful, and this one coming from Raphael almost makes him choke up. 

“He scared me. For a minute, I thought he was losing it or something. I’ve never seen him like that….”

“Me neither.”

“You think it’s going to happen again?”

“I don’t know…. I hope not. But I don’t think anyone can predict.”

“If killing these pricks we’re going after means Leo panics like that over and over, then it’s not worth it. I know that sounds ridiculous, but…. What happened to him last night ain’t supposed to happen, Donnie.”

“I agree with you,” Donnie says. “We all agreed we’d work this mission only as long as we could handle it, and if Leo continues to have panic attacks, that means he can’t handle it.”

Raph blows out a breath. “Man, am I glad to hear you say that.”

Donnie smiles, glancing at his brother. This protective side of Raphael directed at Leo is pretty sweet. Not to mention shockingly sensitive of the red-banded turtle. Leo probably wouldn’t believe it if Donnie told him about it.

“I can’t believe he thought we were going to turn our backs on him just for taking that guy’s head off,” Raphael says. He shakes his head.

“I understand his logic,” says Donnie. “And it’s not that surprising, I guess. Leo’s always had abandonment issues, Raph. I think that’s one reason he’s such a perfectionist. He feels like if he screws up, we’ll bail.”

“Abandonment issues? Since when? Why the hell would he have those?”

“Beats me. But clearly, the idea of us rejecting him scares him to death.”

“So what do we do?” Raphael says, turning toward Donnie. “How do we prove to him that we’re never going to abandon him?”

“I don’t have all the answers, Raph. I wish I did, but—I really don’t know much more about Leo’s psyche than you do. I just know he gets anxious about stuff, and usually, he does a great job at controlling his own emotions. But nobody has perfect self-control all the time.”

“There’s gotta be something we can do….”

“Well…. We can keep talking to him. Comforting him when he needs it.”

“He told me the other day he doesn’t want to fight with me anymore,” says Raphael. “I guess we had a moment. He wasn’t in a good head space, and he actually let me comfort him. You know, it’s not like I got anything against doing that. But he’s always had these walls up….”

Donnie grins. “You got your own walls, Raph.”

“Yeah, I know, but…. I don’t try to hide the way I feel all the time. He does. If he needs us so bad, why hasn’t he told us? If he’s that afraid we’re going to walk out on him, why hasn’t he said anything about it?”

“I don’t think he knows how,” says Donnie. “But he can learn.”

Raphael sighs and hangs his head. He won’t pretend to be the best communicator out of the four turtles, but he’s always worn his heart on his sleeve. When he’s angry, when he’s sad, when he’s happy, everybody knows it. The only emotions he’s actively tried to hide from his family are fear and the tenderness of his love for them. And he’s not even always that good at hiding the fear.

Leo’s always made such a big deal out of his own honor, of which honesty is a key part, and come off as truly fearless and sensible. The idea of him secretly carrying around abandonment issues his whole life, of being scared his family could reject him at any moment, enough to have a panic attack—it would be unfathomable to Raphael if he hadn’t seen Leo panic with his own eyes.

“I don’t know about you, but I’m worried about Mikey almost as much as I am about Leo,” Donnie confesses, looking out at the water with Raph.

Raph lifts his head. “Yeah,” he says. “Me too. He ain’t been himself lately either.”

“He seems to be handling the execution as well as we are, so I don’t think that’s going to be a problem for him in the future…. It’s him coming into contact with more victims that I’m worried about.”

“That Vanessa girl wasn’t even a full-on victim. Just the possibility of what those goons had in store for her screwed Mikey up. So yeah—I don’t know what he’s going to do when we actually rescue somebody who’s already been sold out there.”

Donnie grimaces. Mikey’s always been the most sensitive one in the family, the most compassionate. Donnie doesn’t want to watch him get his heart broken over and over again any more than he wants to see Leo panic. Mikey is no less fierce or capable in battle than his brothers, but this time, battling the enemy isn’t the problem. It’s the human wreckage their enemy leaves behind for the turtles to clean up. That isn’t a problem Mikey can solve with his nunchaku. 

“We’ll just have to look after him carefully,” Donnie says.

“I don’t even know what that means,” Raph replies. “I guess I’ll just follow your lead.”

The two turtles go quiet for a stretch, standing side by side and listening to the city behind them.

“Have you given any more thought to our social experiment?” says Donnie.

Raphael glances at him. “I don’t know,” he says. “There’s been a lot going on, Don.”

Donnie doesn’t respond. His brother’s right—they’ve had plenty of other things to think about lately besides the relationship thing.

“I guess it’d be nice if you let me help you out more,” Raphael says.

“Help me out?” Donnie replies. “With what?”

Raphael shrugs. “I don’t know. Whatever. If you ever need something done and don’t want to do it yourself, you could ask me. Or if there’s something you want just because—you could ask me for it.”

Donnie turns his body toward Raphael, his elbow still on the rail. “Your idea of improving our relationship is…. Giving me what I want?”

Raphael fidgets and pointedly avoids making eye contact with his brother. “It didn’t sound that stupid in my head,” he mumbles.

“No, no, it’s not stupid!” Donnie says, laying his hand on Raph’s forearm. “Just surprising. Raph, if you want me to rely on you more, I can do that.”

Raphael turns his head to look at Donnie, and Donnie gives him a warm smile. Raph smiles back at him.

* * *

Leo knows when Donnie and Raph leave the lair together, despite how quiet and careful they are. He’s aware Raphael sometimes goes out alone this late, so he doesn’t think anything of it. He tries to fall asleep for almost an hour after they go, before giving up and getting out of bed to brew himself a cup of hot tea.

Most of the lights in the lair have been switched off, and Leo leaves it that way, his night vision sharp enough and his familiarity with the lair good enough that he can navigate the darkened kitchen without any extra light. He’s usually never awake at this hour, and the silence of the lair is just like it is in the early morning when he wakes up before the rest of his brothers and before their sensei comes out of his room. He sits down at the kitchen table with his mug as the tea bag steeps for several minutes, tired but not yet sleepy.

Leo sips at his tea until it’s half-gone, thinking about his mental and emotional fragility. Does his still trust himself as much as he did before? Is he willing and prepared to go out and assassinate again? How can he be the turtle who decapitated a man without hesitating and the turtle who needed all three of his brothers to help him out of a panic attack in the same week? He trusts Master Splinter’s insight into his emotional reaction but Leo still feels as if he doesn’t know himself as well as he thought he did now.

He decides to finish the rest of his tea in bed. Once he reaches the turtles’ bedroom corridor, Leo stops outside his door and looks over at Mikey’s. It’s quiet enough that Mikey must be asleep, and Leo has no real reason to check on him…. But after a long pause, the eldest brother crosses over to Mikey’s door and carefully cracks it open.

To Leo’s surprise, Michelangelo is lying awake in bed with his bedside lava lamp switched on. The youngest turtle looks over at Leo, and Leo lets himself in all the way, trying to think of a good explanation for why he’s poking around at two in the morning.

“You can’t sleep either, huh?” Mikey says. He’s got his arms folded under his head on the pillow.

“Yeah, I—I made myself some tea,” says Leo, drawing near to his brother. “I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

“As you can see, I’m not being probed by aliens.”

Leo snorts and sits on the edge of the bed next to Mikey’s thighs, still holding his mug in one hand. The lava lamp casts soft red and purple light over his brother’s face, and Leo contemplates the colors for a moment, wondering if Mikey realized they’re Raph and Donnie’s when he picked the lamp out or if he was subconsciously drawn to them.

“What are you thinking about?” Leo says.

Mikey looks back up at the ceiling. “I don’t know. Lots of stuff.”

Michelangelo isn’t known for being a deep thinker and certainly not an over thinker. Sometimes, it seems like he isn’t thinking at all, at least not about anything serious. But Leo is fully aware that the orange-banded turtle can get lost in his thoughts when he’s stressed out or troubled, which is why he often grows unusually quiet in those emotional states.

“You know, I never thanked you,” says Leo. “For helping me the other night.”

Mikey pushes himself up to half-sit his shell against the wall and his pillow. “You don’t have to thank me for that,” he replies. “I didn’t do much anyway. Donnie’s the one who saved your shell.”

“It helped having you there.” Leo’s looking down into his lukewarm tea, both hands around his mug. “All of you. I don’t know how I would’ve handled that alone.”

Mikey’s quiet for a moment, looking at Leo’s profile in the dim light. “Do you worry about being alone? Like us leaving you alone?”

“Not a lot,” Leo says. “I hardly ever did before I carried out that assassination. But now, I—I know I shouldn’t, but…. I’m asking a lot of you guys. More than I’ve ever asked before. And now you gotta worry about me freaking out again, on top of everything else.”

“You think we got a problem with that?” Mikey says. “Leo, we’ve always worried about you. Just like you’ve always worried about us. Don’t feel bad for panicking. Nobody thinks less of you for it. And we’re not upset about having to look after you. Shit, would you be if it was one of us?”

Leo knows he doesn’t have to answer that out loud.

“Dude, you could have one of those a week for the rest of your life, and none of us would give up on you,” Mikey continues. “We’d just feel really bad for you. And give you whatever you needed to get through it.”

Leo smiles softly. “All right, I hear you,” he says. “But that doesn’t change the fact that this mission was my idea, my calling, and I’m dragging you all into it.” 

“We took a vote. If any of us was seriously against giving the job a shot, he would’ve voted no.”

“Yeah, but—I know you all didn’t want me running off to do it alone, and you probably didn’t want to disappoint me either. I made it pretty clear how much I wanted to move forward with the mission.”

“Leo,” Mikey says. “You’re not forcing any of us to do anything we don’t want to do. For real.”

Leo turns his head to look at his brother. “You sure about that?”

They hold each other’s gaze, and Mikey slouches a little bit under his brother’s knowing look.

“I already told you, I’m fine….” Mikey says.

“You weren’t fine after you saved Vanessa,” says Leo.

“I was upset. I’m okay now. Really.”

Leo stares at his brother. “I believe you. But it’s obviously going to be hard for you to stomach rescuing victims. Especially the ones who are in captivity. I don’t want you to torture yourself just for me,” he says. “Or because you think you have to be there to protect the rest of us.”

Mikey gives his brother a sad smile. “You’d go on the dumbest mission in the world to protect me and Raph and Don,” he says.

The clichéd, predictable replies—I’m the oldest, it’s my job, a good leader is always there for his team—die on Leo’s tongue as soon as they spring to life. He just looks at Mikey without protesting.

“Why would you think I’d ever be okay with staying home while my brothers are out there facing the most dangerous men in town?” Mikey continues. “I know you’re worried that this mission might screw with my head, but nothing could be worse than losing one of you or seeing you get hurt and knowing I wasn’t there to save you.”

Leo feels exactly the same way, and he does understand. But he still can’t help wishing Mikey would spare himself any more heartache.

“And I’m not just doing it for you,” Mikey says. “I’m doing it for the women.”

Leo nods. “I know,” he says. “I know you want to help them just as much as I do.”

Maybe more.

“Just promise me you’ll be honest with us if you hit your limit,” Leo says to his youngest brother. “Don’t try to tough it out just because you think I’ll be disappointed.”

“If I need to stop, I’ll tell you,” says Mikey. “I will.”

“Okay.”

Leo is about to get on his feet, when Mikey leans forward and takes his hand. The older turtle freezes, his eyes locked with Mikey’s, surprised by the sudden gesture.

“You have to tell us if you hit your limit,” Mikey says. “I know this whole thing was your idea, but it doesn’t matter. There’s no shame in taking care of yourself, Leo.”

Leo doesn’t know what to say. He forgets how well his brothers know him. He does feel like he needs to push through his own discomfort, to pursue this mission until it kills him. Leo’s never been a quitter, but walking away from this mission…. from the never-ending stream of victims… that would be more than quitting. He would be a traitor of the women. He doesn’t see how he could ever look himself in the face again.

Mikey squeezes his hand. “Donnie says you can’t die from panic attacks, but that doesn’t mean I want to see you go through them over and over.”

If Leo could blush, he would right now. He looks down, away from Mikey. “It won’t happen again,” he murmurs.

“I hope it doesn’t—but you can’t control it, Leo. Not really. And you shouldn’t have to try so hard to keep it together anyway. I don’t want you to think you gotta hide something like that from us, that’s the complete opposite of what I want…. I’m just saying: you need to be willing to end the mission for your own good too.”

Leo sighs. But he doesn’t pull his hand out of his brother’s. “I’ll do my best to communicate where my head’s at and what I’m feeling,” he says. “I think that’s all I can tell you right now, Mikey. I can’t promise that I’ll be willing to quit for my own comfort.”

Mikey moves his hand in Leo’s, changing the angle of his grip so that he can rub the inside of Leo’s wrist with his thumb. He can probably feel the pulse point there, Leo’s steady heartbeat thrumming in his veins. Something about the touch is so intimate and tender, it makes Leo shiver and relax at the same time.

“If that’s the best you can do, I’ll take it,” Mikey says, his voice gentle.

Leo makes no move to leave, letting Mikey rub his wrist as long as the other turtle wants. Mikey continues for a couple minutes, sensing that Leo likes the touch. It comforts Mikey almost as much as it does Leo. The younger turtle needs to know his eldest brother is all right, after the events of the last week. If something’s wrong with Leo, his brothers’ whole world is off-kilter.

“We should get some sleep, dude,” Mikey says. “Especially if you plan on keeping our ten a.m. training session.”

“Yeah, we’re keeping it,” Leo replies. He finally stands up, instantly missing the warmth of his brother’s hand against his skin. He smiles at Mikey and says, “See you in the morning.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a LONG chapter! Hope you like it. 
> 
> Drop a detailed review in the comments and you'll make me smile.

When Raphael reaches the roof of her building, April’s waiting for him. She’s drinking a can of Diet Coke, looking especially comfortable in her flowing layers, and sitting on a thick blanket she set down on the rooftop. She’s got her hair pinned up, no make-up on. This is how Raphael likes to see her.

“Hey, you,” she says, with a friendly sparkle in her eyes.

“Hey,” Raph replies. “How are you?”

“I’m okay. How are you?”

He shrugs. “Fine, I guess.”

“Your family all good too?”

He nods. “Yeah, they’re all right. Casey?”

“Probably half-asleep in front of the T.V. right now,” says April. “He says hello and wants to know why you haven’t hung out with him in forever.”

Raphael does feel bad about that, but ever since the turtles started pursuing their new mission, it’s been hard to think of coming out to play. “Tell him work’s kind of intense right now,” Raphael says. “But as soon as it eases up a little, I’ll call him.”

April gives him a look, knowing enough about the turtles’ pursuit of traffickers to understand that Raphael hasn’t been in a social mood lately. The turtles decided to keep the execution of Paul Wheeler a secret from her, and she doesn’t know anything about Leo’s panic attack. But she’s smart enough and informed enough to imagine that whatever they’ve been getting into is dark.

“So, what’s up?” she says. “Did you just want to visit or do you have something specific on your mind?” 

Raphael clasps his right wrist behind his back and rubs a spot in the ground with his toes. “Not to get into your business but—I was kinda wondering if you could tell me what Casey does right in your marriage. How he makes your life better.”

April blinks at him. “Oh. Well, that wasn’t what I expected you to ask, but I don’t have a problem answering the question…. Uhhh.” She smiles. “He makes me laugh. That’s always been one of the things I like the most about him. He’s good at looking on the bright side, and even when something goes wrong, he doesn’t let it get him down for long. He’s really good at just rolling with the punches, you know? Way better than I am. He’s got this childlike faith that everything always works out in the end. It’s been really comforting in the past, when I was going through something tough.”

Raphael listens attentively. So far, nothing April’s said surprises him. Sounds like the Casey he’s known for fifteen years too.

“He gets over conflict quickly, which sometimes bothers me in the moment, but I think in the big picture, it’s a good thing. He’s a forgive-and-forget kind of guy,” April says. “He always wants to get back on good terms after we argue, which makes it easier for us to actually do that. If it was up to me, we’d probably stay mad at each other a lot longer.”

Raphael isn’t proud of how he’s acted after fighting with his brothers in the past or how often he’s picked fights with them, especially with Leo. Rarely is he the one to call a truce or apologize. He takes the longest out of the four to cool off when somebody pisses him off, and he’s always had trouble apologizing for his actions, even when he regrets them.

“I don’t know,” April says, smiling again as she shrugs her shoulders. She looks younger in that moment, almost as young as she was when Raphael met her. “Life’s just more fun with Casey in it. I think that’s the main thing. He is _far_ from perfect—and you know he’s always driven me crazy, ever since we met. But I like who I am when I’m with him. For the most part.”

Raphael finally closes the distance between him and April, sitting near her in a slump.

“Raph,” she says gently, laying her hand on his muscular shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

He doesn’t look at her, keeping his eyes on the ground and his hands in his lap. He chews on the inside of his lip, not sure if he can tell her what he’s feeling.

“You know I won’t judge you, right?” says April. “I haven’t in fifteen years, not about to start now.”

Raphael’s mouth flickers into a quick smile. He sighs. “I don’t know…. I guess I’m just worried that I’m not a good brother. I know the guys accept me the way I am, but that still doesn’t make it okay if I’m failing them somehow.”

“Oh, Raph….” April wraps her arm around his back and rubs his carapace, leaning into him. “How could you think you’re a bad brother? You love those three so much, and you’re always there for them when it counts.”

“Thanks…. But you know I ain’t always been nice to them. And I’m not the best listener. I’ve just been thinking about it more the last few weeks, and I realized that my brothers might not feel like I…. love them. Because they might’ve needed things from me this whole time and never asked. And I can’t really blame them if they didn’t, you know? They probably thought I would just give them shit for it and blow them off.”

“Raphael,” April says, laying her other hand on his forearm. “Your brothers know you love them. You talk like you’re a jerk to them all the time, but I know that’s not true. You probably don’t even realize how often you are caring and kind toward them…. But if you want to change, you can. If you want to be more giving, more loving, you can be. It just takes practice.”

Raphael stays quiet for a long moment, staring at the same spot on the ground.

“Have you thought about talking to your brothers?” April says, her tone ever gentle. “Asking them if they want you to treat them differently?”

“We kinda talked about it….. Recently. Not a lot, not with a bunch of specifics. They didn’t complain about me or the way I act. But I still feel like I’m not giving them what they deserve, and I don’t know what I’m doing, so….”

“The best way to handle something like this is straightforward, honest communication. If you don’t know something and they’re not offering the information unprompted, just ask them point blank.”

Raphael takes a breath, still slouching.

“I know it’s hard,” April says. “It feels risky. But I know if you started that conversation, you and your brothers would be okay at the end of it.”

“I don’t know if they trust me enough to tell me the truth,” he says. Raphael glances at April. “Guess I’m afraid to find out they don’t.”

“Give them a chance. Give yourself a chance.”

Raph nods and says, “I’ll try. Thanks for the advice, April.”

She smiles and pats his shell. “Any time.” 

* * *

Leo’s five years old, exploring the sewers with his family. The most cautious out of the four turtles, he stays close to Splinter at the head of the party, looking over his shoulder every other minute to make sure his brothers are still right behind him. He tries to pay attention to Splinter’s body language and take in his surroundings as much as possible, the way his father has already taught him. The sewers are dark, and everything looks the same, smells the same.

“Leonardo,” Splinter says. “Stay here with your brothers and wait for me to return.”

“Yes, Sensei,” Leo replies, stopping where he stands. He watches as the big rat moves away from him, anxiety creeping over him.

His brothers are making a lot of noise behind him, splashing around in the water, playing at something he hasn’t been following.

Mikey suddenly runs past Leo, shrieking and laughing, with Raphael hot on his heels. They head in the direction of a connecting tunnel, away from where Master Splinter went.

“Hey!” Leo says. “Come back here!”

Donnie comes up behind Leo, blinking at Raph and Mikey’s retreating silhouettes. “Where’s Sensei?” he says.

“He said he’d be right back. We have to wait for him here.”

Leo can’t see Raph and Mikey anymore, and it scares him. What if they get lost? Splinter will be so mad at him!

“Donnie, stay here,” Leo says. “I gotta bring Mikey and Raph back.”

“Okay,” Donnie says.

Leo starts off in the direction of his two rambunctious brothers, calling their names. He doesn’t hear them anymore. Are they waiting for him to show up so they can scare him? Or did they already get lost?

“Raphie?” he calls. “Mikey?”

He walks a little ways, eyes scanning the sewer for his two brothers who might be crouching and hiding somewhere.

Leo stops, turns around to look behind him and sees the same dark emptiness that also lies ahead. Donnie’s not there anymore. He doesn’t see anybody anywhere.

“Hello?” he says, his voice echoing in the tunnels.

Nobody answers. All he can hear is the dripping of water.

“Sensei?” Leo calls.

He looks around him again, and now he’s not sure which direction he came from. He’s lost. It’s dark, and he’s alone. He’s lost, and he’ll never find his way home again. He’ll be trapped out here forever, in the darkness, by himself.

Leo’s eyes fill with tears, and he doesn’t try to stop himself from crying, even though he’s too old for that now. He doesn’t make any noise as he cries because he’s suddenly afraid that a stranger will find him here. He just stands still and looks back and forth between the two directions he has to go in, tears streaming down his face.

He hears someone coming, moving through the puddles.

“Leonardo?” Splinter says. “Where are you?”

Leo feels relief wash over him as he hears his father’s voice and sees the rat’s familiar figure shaping up out of the darkness. Splinter approaches, and as soon as he’s within Leo’s sight, the small turtle runs for him, colliding with Splinter’s robes and clinging to them.

“Leonardo, why did you wander away? Are you all right?”

Leo just holds onto Splinter’s robes and weeps in silence.

Splinter picks him up and looks at him, surprised to find his eldest son so upset.

“I’m sorry,” Leo says. “I was looking for Mikey and Raph. I don’t know where they went. I couldn’t find my way back.”

“Your brothers are together where I left you,” says Splinter. “All is well, my son.”

He hugs Leo to his chest, and the turtle sobs into his father’s fur. Splinter hushes him and turns around to head back to his other children. “It is time we go home,” he says.

When he reaches the other three turtles, they immediately ask if their eldest brother is okay. Splinter reassures them that Leo is fine and simply grew frightened. He carries his oldest all the way home, his other sons following him without any of the playfulness they had earlier. In his father’s arms, Leo feels safe but fears that terrible aloneness happening again, being lost forever in the dark. He keeps his face buried in his father’s warm fur, not wanting to look at the sewers again.

“I am here, Leonardo,” Splinter murmurs to him. “You are safe.”

Leo feels better when they reach the lair, but he’s still shaken. Splinter puts Leo down in the turtle bed, where the four brothers all sleep, hoping the smells and warmth will further restore Leo’s sense of security. Donnie, Mikey, and Raph pile into the bed the second Leo’s in it and crowd around him, consoling him as best they can with their words. Mikey hugs Leo’s neck, and Leo just sits there, forlorn.

Splinter crouches next to the turtle bed and looks Leo in the eyes, his other sons looking back at him along with their brother.

“Leonardo, you were not lost,” he says. “I found you easily. I will always find you, my son. And when I am not there, your brothers will find you. One day, when you are grown, you will know how to find your own way. But even then, we will always look for you when you are gone.”

The rat smiles, his eyes warm, his face gentle. And Leonardo believes him. He can’t imagine being grown up and knowing his way around the sewers, but he knows his father will find him if he gets lost again. 

“Leo,” someone whispers. A hand on his arm. “Hey.”

The eldest turtle cracks his eyes open, barely awake, and sees Raphael’s face above him.

“Raphie?” he mumbles. “What is it?”

“You mind if I sleep here tonight?” Raphael says, keeping his voice down.

“Sure, get in,” Leo says, eyes shut again. He turns onto his side and scoots over in the bed to make room.

Raphael slides right under the blanket, and Leo wastes no time laying his arm on his brother’s plastron. He rests his face on Raphael’s shoulder, turning his body toward the other turtle. Raphael lies still on his back and doesn’t touch Leo. They’re silent for a few moments, but instead of slipping away into unconsciousness, Leo remains awake enough to sense his brother thinking.

“You okay?” Leo says, still half-asleep with his eyes shut.

Raphael doesn’t answer at first, and Leo inches his body closer to him, the pleasant feeling from his memory-dream still lingering in his mind. That absolute faith and trust in his father that only a child could feel.

“Leo,” Raphael starts. “I’m never going to leave you, all right?”

“Hmm,” Leo says, only partially registering his brother’s words.

“I know part of you worries that one day Donnie and Mikey and I will disappear—but that’s not going to happen. You don’t have to be afraid of ending up alone. I’m gonna be here with you ‘til I die, and you know with my antics, I’m dying first.”

“I’m older,” Leo murmurs.

“Doesn’t matter,” Raphael says, surprising himself when he starts to choke up a little. “I gotta go first. I wouldn’t know what to do without you.”

“Dying counts as leaving me.”

Raphael snorts. “You’d make a great lawyer.”

Leo takes a breath and says, “Why are you telling me this stuff?”

“Because I love you. And I just want you to feel it enough that you quit being afraid of me leaving.”

Leo reaches up and pets Raphael’s cheek. “Love you too. Go to sleep.”

Raphael finally lays his hand on his brother’s elbow where it rests on his plastron and closes his eyes.

* * *

None of the turtles are expecting to get a call from McGuire so soon after Wheeler’s execution. It’s been almost two weeks since they last met with her to confess what they’d done to the man. They never did hear anything about Wheeler on the local news, and they’re sure the detective had a hand in keeping the story quiet. A beheading is unusual and grizzly enough to make headlines—and though it didn’t, the turtles expect word to reach the streets eventually.

This time, they meet McGuire in another parking garage, on an empty upper level. Something about her energy is different now, less cold, more open. She doesn’t smile at them, but she seems less resentful of their existence.

“The medical examiner said that was one of the cleanest, most precise cuts he’s ever seen,” she says, without so much as a hello. “My compliments.”

Her eyes flicker to Leonardo, with his swords sheathed on his back, and he does his best not to break his poker face.

“Did you tell Vanessa?” says Mikey.

McGuire slides her eyes over to him. “I told her the man is dead. I didn’t tell her how he was killed.”

“Why are we here, Detective?” says Raphael, an edge of impatience in his voice.

She looks at him next, her cool demeanor most unsettling to him out of the four turtles. “Some months ago, Vice and Special Crimes started working together on a case. That work has now reached its culmination point: we have good reason to believe that a prostitution house we’ve been watching is actually a trafficking hot spot, that most if not all of the women there are being pimped against their will. Some of them may even be missing persons, including women who disappeared as underage girls years back.”

Donnie bows his head.

“There’s a raid happening on that house in the near future,” McGuire continues. “A large team of officers are going to storm the scene and try to take as many of the men into custody as possible. The women will have to be processed as prostitutes at first, and we’ll have to determine if they are actually trafficking victims through extensive interviewing and other investigative measures.”

“What’s this gotta do with us?” Raphael says.

“I can give you the address. If you choose to pay the place a visit, fine. If you don’t, the police raid will happen as planned.”

“Why would you do that?” says Leo, genuinely confused. “If we crash a police operation that’s weeks or months in the making, won’t that screw up the case?”

“Not to mention piss off a whole lot of your colleagues,” Donnie adds.

“Several men go in and out of that site,” McGuire explains. “Some of them pimps, some of them johns. We have to expect that some, if not all, of the traffickers are armed. There are enough people in that place at one time that even with a large police presence, a raid is likely to be chaotic. Things could get messy, even dangerous. The female victims could get caught in the crossfire if violence breaks out, to say nothing of the risk to officers. And even if the raid is completed with minimal drama, there’s no guarantee that even a majority of the men we arrest will do any prison time. They could end up back on the streets, with new women.”

“So much for the ‘justice’ system,” Raphael quips in a bitter tone.

“You want us to clean the place out,” Leo says. “Even though there are only four of us and we don’t have guns.”

McGuire rests her gaze on the eldest turtle. “I’m not asking you to do anything,” she says. “All I’m offering is the address. The choice is yours.”

“You _want_ us to kill more of these guys,” says Donnie as it dawns on him. “That’s what this is about.”

McGuire doesn’t answer. She starts to approach the turtles, getting closer to them than she ever has before. She takes a Post-It out of her breast pocket and hands it Raphael.

“If you go,” she says, looking at the red-banded turtle dead in the eyes, “make sure you don’t leave any evidence of yourselves behind.”

* * *

Donnie waits until the dojo is empty for the day to return there for his yoga practice. He hasn’t done yoga in a few weeks now and he’s feeling the effects of his negligence. The purple-banded turtle took up yoga when he was twenty-one, initially experimenting with it as a way to further calm his mind and improve his flexibility. He can meditate as well as his brothers, but meditation has never done for him what it does for Leo: given him that perfect mental silence without any effort. Donnie finds it’s easier for him to be present in his body when he’s moving it, rather than when he’s sitting still.

He left his yoga mat behind in his room and simply uses the dojo mat instead. After so many years of practice, he’s memorized several yoga sequences as if they were kata, and sometimes he’ll freestyle a sequence to fit his mood. Today, he moves through a sequence meant to relieve stress, beginning in Extended Child’s Pose. He flows through Forward Folds, Warrior I and II, Feather Peacock and Plow, Plank and Downward Dog. Gradually, the tension he brought to the mat dissolves, and when he finishes his practice in Sukhasana, he feels better than he has all day. He sits there with his eyes closed for an unknown number of minutes and only opens his eyes when he hears the dojo door slide open and closed.

Leo approaches the mat but stops about a yard away. “Hey,” he says, his voice quiet. “Mind if I join you?”

“Sure,” says Donnie. “I was just about to meditate a little.”

“As I hoped.”

Leo sits down in front of his brother, folding his legs in the same pose. He rests his hands palms up on his knees, connecting thumbs with forefingers, and closes his eyes after quick eye contact with Donnie. 

The two turtles sit there facing each other, the dojo so quiet that they can hear each other’s breathing. Leo only takes a minute or two to reach that place of floating almost out of his body, while Donnie takes more time to slip into a deeper trance than the one his yoga took him to.

Time passes without their keeping of it, and they begin to sense each other’s energy, what Master Splinter taught them to think of as _qi_. Leo’s always been the one best at feeling his brothers’ qi, with Mikey a close second. Donnie has only been able to pick up on it a handful of times in his life, often without intention, and it used to spook him, the unexplainable and metaphysical experience of it.

Leo’s energy is as cool and calming as the blue of his mask, a steady and unflinching presence. It feels much older than Leo's 30 years yet ageless at the same time. Indestructible. That durability, the seeming eternalness of Leo, comforts Donnie now the way his father's existence used to comfort him as a small child. Leo’s qi is self-assured, grounded, clear. It reminds Donnie of running water, has the same quiet power as the stream that wears away stone over time. Leo’s had that power all his life. Donnie didn’t recognize it for what it was when they were little, but his father must have. That’s why Leo was always their unofficial, silently accepted leader. His innate power, intertwined with unshakeable resilience, is the thing Donnie and Raph and Mikey trust, the reason they’ll follow Leo into danger and expect to survive. 

Donnie’s energy feels surprisingly vulnerable to Leo, tender as the underbelly of a fish or perhaps their own turtle flesh encased in their shells. Donnie’s qi is gentle and inviting, just as Leo knows his smartest brother to be. Leo feels a quality in Donnie’s energetic body that he can only describe as goodness—the thing that drives Donnie to help his brothers however and whenever he can, that allows him to approach each of them without judgment and accept their flaws with love and compassion. That goodness draws Leo in like light reaching through darkness. 

Leo’s qi brushes up against Donnie’s, and Donnie gasps softly at the sensation. That’s never happened before…. It feels like an electrical current rippling through some deep, unreachable part of him. Leo feels it too but doesn’t give any outward, physical signal. Donnie’s energy almost shrinks away from Leo’s, and maybe Leo should be afraid of what connecting this way could mean. But instead, he opens his own energy like a bird unfolding its wings and encircles Donnie’s, their two qi bodies sparking at the seam of contact.

Donnie shudders in real life, with a sharp inhale. Leo doesn’t hear him, can’t feel his body anymore, just holds onto Donnie’s energy with his own. Donnie, barely realizing he’s doing it as he does, reaches out and takes Leo’s hand in his.

Leo’s qi swirls around Donnie’s like water around the stone, and Leo’s love for Donnie flares up like blue flame, intense enough that Donnie flinches as his breath catches in his chest. Leo doesn’t hold back for once, letting his love flow freely toward his brother. Donnie lets it wash over him, too stunned and overwhelmed to respond for a minute, feeling almost as if he might be swept away in his brother’s love. Love so great that it must bring Leo to his knees, love interwoven with a ferocious protectiveness, love that is somehow as delicate as it is strong. Now it’s plain why Leo guards his heart as much as he does: the pain he would feel in reaction to loss or rejection would be as tremendous as his love. 

Eventually, Donnie regains his bearings enough to deliberately find his love for Leo and offer it to his brother in return. The current of Leo’s energy stutters—he wasn’t expecting reciprocation. Donnie’s love emerges from his qi without the intensity of Leo’s but with a softness and a depth that almost hurts Leo. In his physical body, the eldest turtle’s gut tightens and a lump rises in his throat. Donnie takes a breath that helps stabilize him and sinks into the feeling of his own love for Leo as it flows through him and into his brother’s qi body. Leo feels the indescribable depth of that love, how unbreakable and unconditional it is, how intrinsic to Donnie’s being it is. Leo can feel the undying loyalty built into that love, the utter faith his brother has in him. If Leo’s love is like water, then Donnie’s is the earth: constant, life-sustaining, the beginning and the end. 

Leo doesn’t feel the tears spilling down his face, wetting his mask. He doesn’t even feel his brother’s hand in his. The turtles’ breathing is so slow and shallow, they could be in a deep sleep. 

It’s unclear which energy starts to pull back first, so gradual the parting is. There’s a final sliding against each other that feels careful and intimate, both brothers missing the sensation even before it ends.

They come back into their bodies slowly, Donnie before Leo, and it’s like waking up from an intense dream. They’re both warm, that strange tingling they often feel in deep meditation still lingering in their hands. Leo becomes aware of the tears drying on his face, and Donnie notices his hand in his brother’s. The purple-banded turtle opens his eyes first, and Leo follows suit a moment later.

They look at each other, dazed and quiet.

“Leo?” Donnie says, his voice hushed. “Are you okay?”

Leo swallows and nods. “I think so,” he replies. “Are you?”

“Yeah….. That was…. really intense. Did you know we could do that?”

“No. Well, I’ve heard of the concept, but I’ve never….. experienced it.” Leo wipes at his face with the back of his free hand and sniffs.

Donnie doesn’t know what to say. Leo’s the meditation, astral projection, spirituality master here. Donnie’s actually out of his depth for once. He’s never felt anything like what just happened, and he doesn’t know what to make of it. He squeezes Leo’s hand, watching his big brother and assessing his body language.

“You sure you’re okay?” he says.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” says Leo. “I just, um—like you said, it was intense.”

“Overwhelming.”

Leo nods, looking down into his lap. “I should’ve asked your permission or warned you or something. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. You didn’t do anything wrong,” Donnie says. “I’m glad we shared that.”

Leo takes a breath, reining in his emotions. He still can’t look at his brother, feeling exposed in a way he’s never been before. “I think I need to go lie down,” he says.

“Yeah, I bet.” Donnie stands up, stretching his legs that have long fallen asleep. He holds out a hand to Leo to help him up, and Leo takes it after a moment’s pause. “You want company?” 

Leo’s torn between wanting to be alone to process what just happened and wanting his brother’s comfort. “I—I don’t know.”

“How about I join you and you can ask me to leave whenever you want?” Donnie says.

Leo glances at his brother, then away, and nods.

* * *

Mikey knocks on his father’s door early the next morning, early enough that Splinter seems surprised to see him. The youngest turtle has always been the one to stay up and sleep in the latest out of the four. When he was a child, Splinter had to all but drag him out of bed in the morning.

“Michelangelo,” Splinter says, looking up from the book he’s reading.

“Sensei,” says Mikey. “I was wondering if we could talk in private.”

“Of course. Come in. Sit.”

Mikey joins his father, sitting on the edge of Splinter’s bed. He catches the title of Splinter’s book when the rat closes it and sets it aside: x. When he looks up at Splinter’s face, he sees it with a clarity he rarely has: the number of silver hairs in Splinter’s fur, his eyes a little duller than they used to be, a grizzled quality that wasn’t there ten years ago. His sensei, his father, is getting old. The turtles don’t know exactly how they or Splinter are aging compared to humans, what their life expectancy should be, but they do know that Splinter was already an adult when he transformed into his present form thirty years ago. If he were an ordinary rat, he would’ve died long ago. Mikey hates not knowing how much time Splinter has left—his brothers do too—and he tries not to think about it, though avoidance won’t work forever.

“Does something trouble you, my son?” Splinter says, giving the turtle his full attention, his hands folded in his lap.

“I don’t know….,” says Mikey, ducking his head and picking at the blanket. “This job McGuire offered us has been on everybody’s mind. I haven’t told Leo what I think yet—I guess because I know we should do it but I dread doing it too.”

“That is a reasonable way to feel in this case. It will be quite dangerous for you and your brothers to fight so many men on your own, no matter how little fighting skills your enemies have. And the task of rescuing however many victims you may find there adds great responsibility to your shoulders.”

“So you think we should turn the job down?”

“That is a decision I cannot make for you and your brothers. You must do what your hearts tell you. I will only say that if you decide to allow the police to handle the situation, I will think no less of you.” 

Michelangelo nods. Sometimes, he wishes Splinter would just tell him what to do, like when he was a kid. He continues to believe that his father always knows what the right thing to do is, and if Splinter would just give the turtles his orders, everything would always turn out all right.

“Is this the only thing troubling you?” Splinter says.

Mikey looks away from him again and doesn’t speak right away.

Splinter waits patiently.

“I’m worried that things between me and the others aren’t equal….” Mikey says, lowering his voice a little. “I feel like maybe…. They don’t depend on me the way they do on each other. Or the way I depend on them.”

“What have you observed that causes this suspicion?” Splinter says.

“I don’t know…. It’s hard to describe. It’s more of a feeling than anything they’ve said or done. I was just thinking recently, and I realized that our whole lives, they’ve never come to me when they’re upset. Maybe they don’t think I can handle it. They’ve always been there for me when I’m sad or scared or hurt or whatever. But they haven’t let me be there for them, unless it’s like—we’re all together, in a group.”

Splinter considers Michelangelo quietly. Among the turtles, the youngest has always been thought of as the most sensitive—but Splinter has long known this is an oversimplification. His sons are sensitive in different ways, and while Michelangelo is the most open about his feelings, he not more delicate than Leonardo or Raphael or even Donatello. Splinter would not be surprised if his sons have mistakenly assumed the opposite. The three older turtles have always been protective of Michelangelo as the baby brother, despite the four being only minutes apart in age. Perhaps it is precisely because the orange-banded turtle has always displayed his most tender and positive emotions—his playfulness, his joy, his pain, his love—without any self-consciousness or restraint, only as very small children do, that his brothers have taken it to heart that he is the youngest.

“My son,” Splinter starts. “There may be some truth to your words. I cannot be sure. What I know is that any attempts your brothers have made to conceal their own troubles from you have been made out of a desire to protect you. Not out of mistrust.”

“I get that, but I don’t want to be protected,” Mikey says. “I don’t need to be. Not like that. Not from them. The only time I need protection is up there, on the streets. But in here? At home? We’re safe.”

“I may have misspoken. What I meant to say is: if your brothers have kept their own personal struggles from you, it is because they don’t want you to worry about them.”

“If they worry about me, I should get to worry about them. When they don’t let me return what they give me, there’s an imbalance. It’s not fair.”

“You are right,” Splinter says. “Imbalance in a relationship creates problems, just as an imbalance in the self does…. Have you considered confronting your brothers with your thoughts?”

Mikey looks away from his father again, suddenly reminding his father of his teenage self. “No,” he says, his voice low. “There’s a pretty good chance that if I tried to tell them what I told you, they’d just blow me off.”

“If you want things to change, you must try to speak with them. It is the only way.”

Mikey sighs, picking at Splinter’s blanket again. “I know.”

“Is there anything else I can do for you, my son?” Splinter says.

“I don’t think so,” Mikey replies. He looks up at his father and offers a small smile. “Thanks, sensei.” 

“You can always come to me with whatever is on your mind and your heart, Michelangelo.”

Mikey’s smile warms. “I know.”

* * *

The turtles go out on patrol that night and finish up around twelve-thirty, deciding to spend some time on their favorite rooftop before going to bed. The sky is clear, and Leo suggests they stargaze, which they haven’t done in months. They lie on their backs next to each other, heads pillowed on their crossed arms: Leo, Donnie, Raph, and Mikey. Donnie points out the constellations and individual stars he recognizes, just like he always does: Hydra, the longest constellation in the sky; Virgo the Maiden; Bootes the Herdsman; Cancer the Crab; the star Arcturus, a red supergiant; and the planets Mars, Venus, and Saturn.

Donnie loved astronomy as a child, devouring whatever old books he could find on the subject and often lagging behind his brothers in the sewers to peer through the nearest grate at the sky. Once they started venturing above ground, Donnie was mesmerized by the stars and the moon. He would dream of going somewhere else in the country with less light pollution, where the night sky looked more like the pictures in his books: cluttered with celestial bodies.

“Aliens have to be real, dude,” Mikey says. He always brings up aliens when they star gaze.

“You already know I agree with you,” Donnie replies.

“You ever wonder who would look weirder to them: us or humans?” says Raphael.

“Definitely humans,” says Mikey. “If aliens are green like us, maybe they’d think we’re like their distant cousins or something.”

“Aliens are almost definitely not little green men, Mikey,” Donnie tells him patiently.

Leo lies there in contented silence, listening to his brothers talk and watching the stars twinkle far above them. He always wanted to see a shooting star and make a wish on it, though to this day he doesn’t know what he would wish for. Even when he was a child, he knew he couldn’t wish for something silly and insignificant. If his wish had a real chance at coming true, he had to ask for something big. Maybe at one time, he would’ve wished to become the best ninja in the world—but now he is not so concerned with achieving that kind of superiority, understanding his father’s lesson that fulfilling your own potential is the only true goal in ninjitsu.

“You all right, Leo?” Raphael says.

“Fine,” Leo says. “Just thinking.”

The four brothers are quiet for a couple minutes, looking at the sky together.

Then, Raphael says, “What’s one thing, past or present, that scares you?”

“You asking all of us?” says Donnie.

“Yeah.”

“Hmmm.”

“You asked, Raph,” Mikey says. “You go first.”

“All right,” says Raphael. “One of you getting hurt or killed because I fail to save you.”

His three brothers share that fear, and they all know it.

“For a long time, I was afraid we’d get captured by humans and experimented on,” Donnie says. “Now, I don’t think about it as much—but I’d have nightmares about it as a kid.” 

Nobody speaks for a minute.

Then, Mikey softly says, “Splinter dying.”

They all dread that one too, no less now than when they were fifteen.

“Leo?” Raphael says softly, after a few moments.

Leo doesn’t answer at first, searching his mind for a fear he’s willing to confess that his brothers haven’t already mentioned.

“Being the last one alive,” he says.

Raphael thinks about the other night, their conversation about which one of them will die first.

Leo does too.

“We gotta go out together,” Mikey says. “Epic battle.”

“Yeah,” says Donnie, looking at the constellation Ursa Major. “Together.”

He slips his hand into Leo’s.

“I’ve always wanted the death of a warrior,” Leo says.

“Of course you do,” says Raphael, his voice tinged with both exasperation and affection. 

The brothers lapse into silence, the energy amongst them now somber. 

“If you could turn into a human, would you do it?” Mikey says.

“Damn, you haven’t asked that in years,” says Raph.

They used to debate the subject as kids, half the time turning the conversation into a swapping of fantasies about human life. Those fantasies changed over time, as the turtles grew and approached adolescence, and eventually, they stopped talking about the hypothetical scenario altogether, each of them accepting their lives as turtles and putting the impossibility of human life aside.

“I haven’t really thought about it in years,” Mikey says to Raph.

“If we became human now, I have no idea how we’d actually manage to integrate into society,” says Donnie. “We don’t have formal education or work history…. We don’t even have social security numbers or a real address.”

“You got a point, Don,” Raphael replies. “And I don’t know about you guys, but I’m used to not paying rent or taxes."

“So that’s a no, Raph?” says Mikey.

“Yeah, I think it’s a no. What would I even do out there?”

“Become a pro boxer. Make Mike Tyson look like a punk.”

Raphael snorts. “Yeah, right.”

“Would you become human, Mike?” Leo says, voice softened. He still hasn’t let go of Donnie’s hand. He’ll let his brother break that contact.

Michelangelo lies next to his brothers in silence for longer than any of them expect, and it almost makes them nervous.

“Not if I was the only one of us to do it,” he says. “I think I could make it work, and it’d probably be a lot of fun sometimes. But I wouldn’t do it without you guys.”

Michelangelo’s three brothers observe a moment of quiet gratitude for his loyalty.

“Leo?” Mikey says.

“No,” Leo replies. “I have no desire to be human. I don’t think I ever have.”

“Not even when we were kids?”

“I don’t think so.”

“I don’t understand how you could go your whole life without ever being even a little bit curious.”

“Or restless,” says Donnie.

Leo thinks about it, his eyes retracing some of the constellations Donnie pointed out. “I am who I am because I’m a turtle,” he says. “We all are. If we were human, we wouldn’t be ninjas. We wouldn’t be brothers in the same way. I don’t know who we’d be. Maybe it would be nice to walk around topside freely and mingle with the humans, but I wouldn’t want to be one of them. Becoming one of them would mean giving up what we have.”

Donnie, Raph, and Mikey reflect on their oldest brother’s words—each of them feeling how deeply committed Leo is to their way of life and their family, how much at peace he is with himself, and the underlying fear of losing his brothers. They have always been able to imagine alternative life paths for themselves, even if outlandish or silly, should they become human. But Leo was born to be a ninja. If he were human, he would be far happier as a samurai in 16th century Japan than as anything in 21st century New York City. 

“Well,” Donnie says, his hand still warm in Leo’s. “I like who we are too. If we had the choice to become human and you all wanted to do it, I’d have to follow you—but I don’t wish for a different life.”

The turtles lie there on the roof for a few more minutes, looking at the sky. Each one finds comfort in knowing the others are loyal to him even to the point of rejecting human freedom and safety. 

“We should go,” Leo says, though he wishes he could fall asleep in the open air the way he and his brothers often do when they go to April’s farmhouse.

They get up and slink away to the street, where the nearest sewer grate waits for them.

* * *

The night of the raid on the trafficking house, the turtles arrive earlier than they like, only because there are bound to be more men present around midnight versus 2 a.m. According to McGuire’s intel, the action happens all on one floor of the otherwise empty building—the fifth floor, the top one. Male clients show up and usually either take their chosen women out of the building to a second location or use one of the rooms in the lower floors. During the occasional period where business is dead, the pimps and their associates may use the women themselves, right there in front of everybody else on the floor. They always clear out by morning, and they only do business at this location on Friday and Saturday nights.

The turtles scoped out the building on a night when nobody was home, so when they show up for the job, they silently scale down the wall from the roof and slip into a window they left open on the fourth floor. The room they first enter is empty, unlike some of the other rooms where bare mattresses lie in wait, a sight that made all four brothers nauseous. They tip toe down the corridor to the stairwell and go up to the fifth floor once they know the coast is clear.

Outside the one and only door to the fifth floor, the turtles pause and listen to the muffled noises coming from the other side, each of them ready with a smoke grenade in each hand.

“One,” Leo whispers, his hand on the door knob. “Two. Three!”

He flings the door open and leads his brothers inside, the four of them throwing their smoke grenades as far into the big room as they can.

In seconds, huge, white plumes of smoke burst into the air, rising high and filling the width of the room. The turtles brandish their weapons and charge into the chaos. 

The higher-pitched cries of the women and girls ring out amongst the deeper voices of the men, who curse and yell. The turtles work quickly while the smoke is at its thickest, taking down as many men as they can get their hands on, binding them with them zip ties. They can tell the men apart from the women by smell first, touch second. A couple times, the turtles close their hands around a slender arm or wrist, instantly letting go, sometimes without eliciting any sound from the woman or girl at all. In the future, they’ll look back on this raid and reflect on just how quiet the victims were, given the circumstances.

The smoke begins to clear a little, and they can see just enough to know where to go to seize the pimps, johns, and handlers who are trying to escape.

Raphael, ever the eager warrior, throws himself into the thickest concentration of men he can see. He uses his sai, fists, and elbows with expert fluidity, always seeking to knock out his opponent with a single blow. At least half of the men near him try to run away as soon as they realize what he is and how exceptional his fighting skills are. It’s always a disappointment to Raph when he fights common civilians—how often they flee rather than engage him in combat. He loves coming face to face with another skilled martial artist, danger be damned. Out of all his brothers, Raphael has always relished battle the most, and tonight is no exception.

Men swirl around him in a dizzying series of attackers, fallen opponents, and runners as Raphael works his way toward the back of the room. The fight moves too fast for him to distinguish the men’s faces from each other, and the smoke-laced darkness doesn’t help either. All he cares about is aiming for skin that isn’t green. He jabs his sai into noses, throats, bellies, foreheads. When he’s got a clear path between him and a runner, he throws one sai at the man, and the metal weapon hits the guy dead center in the back, sending him to the ground. Raph runs for him, not wanting anybody to get a hold of the sai, and punches the man unconscious with a single left jab.

He picks up his thrown sai and raises his head in time to see a man heading for the door with a small, young woman hoisted over his shoulder. Raphael’s eyes meet hers—she’s not struggling at all, just staring at him in pure bewilderment—and he snaps into motion, ignoring everything and everyone around him as he rockets toward her. He lets out an animalistic snarl as he closes in on the man and the woman, throwing one of his sai at the man’s leg. The sai lands its target, and the man’s knee buckles underneath him, sending him into a kneeling position. The woman shakes loose.

“Go!” Raph shouts at her, as she staggers backward with her gaze still fixed on him in disbelief.

She lingers only for a couple seconds before turning around and running the rest of the way to the door.

Raphael grabs the man’s hair and yanks him backward, pressing the tip of his remaining sai into the man’s throat. He looks down into the man’s eyes, and the man looks up at him with surprise, dread, and fear, holding his hands up near his chest as if to beg for mercy.

“Where the fuck did you think you were going with her?” Raphael growls. “Huh?”

The man opens his mouth, but he’s speechless.

Raphael punches him in the face with the sai gripped in his fist, dropping the man to the floor. He holsters the sai, straddles the man’s waist with his knees, and starts to choke him with both hands, looking right at him. The man, blood from his broken nose staining his face, tries to grip Raphael’s wrists to pull them off, but there’s no strength in it. Raphael chokes him until he passes out, releasing him as soon as the man loses consciousness. His younger self would’ve killed the bastard—but Raphael wants his first execution on this mission to be more meaningful.

Satisfied, he stands up and retrieves his other sai from where it lays gleaming on the floor nearby. 

Donnie knocks the last man out in his vicinity with a high kick to the face, the man falling to the ground where three others already lay unconscious. Donnie scans the room around him, looking for his brothers and the women and a new enemy to fight. Raphael’s fighting in the corner at a diagonal from Donnie and almost looks like he’s enjoying himself. Mikey’s not far from the opposite corner and the door, using only one pair of nunchaku. He doesn’t seem to need help either. Leo—

Donnie turns around to face the back of the room, looking for his blue-banded brother. He finds him quickly, the fastest moving thing in the shadows. His katana are sheathed on his back; he’s been fighting only with his fists and feet to avoid killing or even maiming his enemies. He’s only got a few men engaged in combat, and those men don’t seem to be much of a threat.

Donnie’s eyes shift toward someone moving in a dark spot to his left and recognize the metallic glint of a gun before he sees the face of the man brandishing it. The man’s crouching and aims for Leo, who continues to fight a few yards away without noticing him.

Donnie’s heart jumps into his throat, and he charges at the gunman, thrusting the end of his bo at the pistol. He hits the man’s hand, and the man drops the gun. BANG! A shot rings out, a bright flash exploding in the air above the weapon as the gun hits the floor. Everybody in the room flinches and ducks. The gunman’s on his hands and knees only for a second, then starts to get up and reaches for the gun again…. Donnie gets to him first, striking his back with the bo only hard enough to keep him down, then jabbing the end into the man’s ribs. The man falls onto his back, groaning, and Donnie continues to approach him with less urgency, half circling him to put his body between the man and Leo. The gun is far enough away from the man that Donnie could hit him again in the time it takes to get it but close enough that the man could still grab it if he really wanted.

“What the fuck kinda freak are you?” the man says, as he sits up. His face is twisted in a grimace. The bruises Donnie just gave him are going to be nasty.

“I could ask you the same question,” Donnie replies, his posture and his face and even the sound of his voice feral. He holds his bo in both hands, ready to strike the man again like a cobra with its hood raised.

“You’re not human…”

“Yet I’m still a better person than you.”

The man glares at Donnie, who now stands still with his carapace to Leo. They stare at each other for a long, tense moment—

The man darts for the gun, grabs it, Donnie punches the butt of his bo into the man’s belly, the man rolls away from him with the gun in hand and aims for Donnie.

Donnie drives the bo into the man’s brow hard. Hard enough to kill him. The man goes limp on the ground, his hands still loosely holding the gun.

Donnie stands there and just looks down at him, waiting to see if the man will wake up again. But Donnie knows exactly how much force he used. The blood’s already oozing across the man’s face. His neck might be snapped. His brain won’t recover.

Donnie uses the clean end of his bo to push the gun out of the man’s hands and far away, then pulls the cloth out of his belt pouch and wipes the blood off the other end of his weapon. 

Michelangelo sees the girl first, her long blonde hair and the pale pink silk of her dress. She’s running, pulled along by a man who dwarfs her. He’s got her by the wrist, and he’s moving fast toward the nearest exit. Michelangelo bolts for them, not even registering whether the man’s got a weapon in his free hand, leaping over unconscious bodies and zig zagging around mattresses. Most of the smoke has dissipated now, and he can see the girl and the exit clearly. He keeps his nunchaku holstered in his belt, sprinting with empty hands.

The man and the girl reach the door to the stairs and disappear through it. Mikey doesn’t slow down, rapidly closing the gap between them. He hears one of his brothers call his name but ignores it, launching himself into the stairwell and its yellow light. The three pairs of feet stomping down the winding flights of stairs sound loud. The man knows he’s being chased. Mikey isn’t even trying to be quiet. He can hear the man’s voice, the words unintelligible but the tone harsh and nasty. He must be telling the girl to hurry up.

Mikey grips the hand rail with both hands and throws himself over, landing on the section of stairs for the floor below him, ahead of the man and girl. Face to face with Mikey, the man and girl freeze on the third story landing, staring at Mikey with the kind of familiar shock he’s seen humans react to him with before.

“You’re not going anywhere with her,” Mikey growls, taking up the whole width of the step he’s standing on.

The man moves as if he’s going to go back upstairs, jerking the girl in his grip.

Michelangelo lunges for him, body slamming the man into the corner of the stair landing. The girl shrieks, as the man loses his grip on her. Michelangelo punches the guy in the face, then turns his head to look at the girl, who’s already a few steps above him.

“Go back to my brothers!” he says. “Now!”

She doesn’t have to be told twice. She starts to run back upstairs to the fifth floor.

The man tries to throw Michelangelo off but doesn’t quite succeed. The turtle regains his position on top of the man, pinning him to the floor with his left hand, and starts to hit him over and over again with his right fist.

“Mikey!”

Michelangelo’s brain registers Leo’s voice on some level, but he’s in a kind of trance, watching the man’s face turn to pulp under his bloodied fist.

“Michelangelo! Stop!”

Mikey reaches his arm back again to throw another punch, but Leo catches him by the wrist and holds his arm away. Mikey turns his head to look up at his brother, who’s looking at him with troubled eyes. Mikey realizes he’s panting for breath.

“He’s done,” Leo says, lowering his voice back to normal speaking volume. “We gotta get out of here.”

Mikey looks back down at the man, who might be dead from head trauma or on his way there. The man’s body is contorted on the floor and against the wall in a crooked shape. His face is unrecognizable now, broken and bruised and awash in his blood.

Leo lets go of Mikey’s wrist. “Tie him up just in case and come back to the fifth floor. We’re going to wait with the girls until the ambulances get here. We already called.”

Michelangelo stands up, still catching his breath, and Leo lingers on the step above the landing, watching him. Mikey reaches into a pouch on his belt and pulls out one of the zip ties he brought with him. He nods at his brother.

“I’ll be right there,” he says.

Leo turns around and starts to go back upstairs but goes at a pace that lets Mikey know he’s listening for more blows.

Mikey binds the man’s wrists with the zip tie, making it a point not to look at his face again. His heart’s starting to slow down toward its resting rate, and his breathing is evening out. His mind is clear again, the fire of his rage put out for now. By the time he starts his ascent back to the fifth floor, Mikey can’t hear Leo anymore. He doesn’t look back at the man.

The women and girls are huddled together in the center of the room, barely speaking. They watch the turtles, who keep a respectful distance. Raph and Leo are dragging the last of the unconscious, alive men toward the pile they’ve made against the left hand wall of the room. Only two men remain untouched on the floor, away from the pile: the dead.

Mikey joins Donnie, who’s standing nearest the women and girls, his bo already holstered on his back. He looks at a loss for what to do.

“I tried asking them if they were hurt, but I didn’t get a clear answer from all of them,” Donnie says to Mikey, keeping his voice quiet. “Not that there’s anything I can do for them anyway.”

Mikey lays his clean, left hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Medics are gonna be here soon, Don,” he says.

As if on cue, the sound of sirens surfaces outside, the whine growing louder and closer by the second.

Raph and Leo come toward their younger brothers, Raph standing with them while Leo goes straight for the group of victims. Raph, Donnie, and Mikey watch their eldest brother as he bows to the women and girls, then asks them with folded hands to please keep the turtles a secret from the cops.

“Tell them men wearing masks saved you,” he says.

One of the older women in the group, a black woman with dark skin, holds Leo’s gaze and nods. “We won’t say nothing about turtles with swords,” she says to him.

Leo bows again and thanks her.

Once the sirens are right outside the building, on the ground below, the brothers slip out of a window and disappear into the night.

* * *

By the time they reach the lair, the adrenaline rush is gone, leaving only emotional and psychological exhaustion. Each turtle feels numb in a way, the whole raid now surreal—like a dream half-gone or someone else’s memory. The four of them are quiet, just as they were when they returned from attacking Paul Wheeler.

“Did you?” Mikey says to Leo in the sewers, once the lair entrance is within sight.

And Leo shakes his head. He knows, along with Raph and Donnie, what Mikey means. He didn’t use his katana to kill anyone this time. Now that he can think, Leo’s not even sure if he’s glad or ashamed.

The brothers file into the lair and immediately shed their weapons by the door, as if wanting to be rid of them forever. Their home is darkened and silent, their father no longer in the habit of waiting up for them the way he once did when they were teenagers and young twenty-somethings—though whether he ever truly sleeps on nights like this before the turtles return, they don’t know.

Donnie heads for his lab ahead of his brothers and tells them over his shoulder: “The three of you go to my room. I’ll be right there.”

He joins them a few minutes later with a small towel and a metal dish. The extra blankets and pillows are right where he left them on his bed earlier today. Raph, Leo, and Mikey are sitting on the floor, looking up at him wearily. They didn’t discuss in advance how tonight was going to go following the job, but Donnie meant it when he originally said they needed an aftercare routine for executions. He knew none of them would truly want to sleep alone tonight—so he decided his room would be the place they all slept together this time.

First, he has to clean them up. He sits down in the empty spot of the circle and starts with Mikey, who’s on his right. The towel’s wet, and he uses it to wipe the blood off Mikey’s fist, knowing it doesn’t belong to his brother. Mikey doesn’t say a word, just lets Donnie do what he wants. When Mikey’s hand is clean, Donnie brushes his thumb over his brother’s knuckles, then turns to Raph on his left. He uses a different, unstained part of the towel to wipe over the small cuts and abrasions on Raphael’s face, including the most obvious: the split in his lips. Raphael closes his eyes as Donnie cups his cheek with his free hand and dabs at the wound. Finally, Donnie crosses the center of the circle to Leo, whose face is virtually untouched. His hands and his arms took the most abuse, and Donnie uses the last clean part of the towel on Leo’s knuckles and fingers. He can feel Leo watching his face, but he doesn’t meet Leo’s eyes with his own until he’s finished working. He’s not sure what passes between them in that shared look.

Donnie gets up to put the dirty towel in the metal dish on his dresser, then passes the blankets and pillows down to his brothers. Some of their extra sleeping mats are waiting for them on the floor; they unroll them to fill the space between Donnie’s bed and the opposite wall. The four turtles pile together: Raphael next to Leo next to Donnie next to Mikey, each of them cuddling the brother next to him somehow.

Mikey goes to sleep within minutes, resting against Donnie’s side under his brother’s arm. Raphael isn’t far behind him, curled around Leo’s carapace. But Leo and Donnie lie awake in silence for a while, Leo’s forehead pressed to Donnie’s shoulder and his hand clasping Donnie’s. Donnie stares at the glow-in-the-dark stars on his ceiling and waits to feel Leo’s breathing change to indicate sleep. He lies there on his back and with his eyes open because every time he closes them, he sees the faces of the women and the girls, the white smoke all around them.

* * *

When Raphael finds his youngest brother wailing on the punching bag in their workout space, it’s late enough that the rest of the family is asleep or pretending to be. It’s not that Mikey is stopping Raph from sleeping, although the noise of his blows fills much of the lair. Raph could sleep through it if he wanted to, his brain having classified “brothers working out” in the category of sounds to ignore. But Raph was lying awake in his bed, nowhere near tired enough to pass out. Eventually, the muffled sound of Mikey attacking the punching bag made it clear to Raphael that his brother needed checking on.

Mikey doesn’t stop throwing punches until Raph is close enough to touch him. Raph sits down on the weight bench behind his brother, his hands together between his thighs, and just looks at his brother. Mikey pauses, breathing hard.

“What?” he says.

“You’re upset,” says Raphael.

“No shit.” Which is not a Mikey-like response at all. He hits the bag with his left fist half-heartedly. “You just gonna sit there and watch me until I quit?” 

“I came by to see if you wanna talk.”

Mikey squares his shoulders, facing the bag. “Since when do you want to talk anything out?” he says and unleashes a four-punch combination.

“Since we started getting involved in the darkest shit we ever been caught up in,” says Raph. “You’re not okay. I’m just worried about you.”

“What do you want me to say, Raph? Huh? What can I say that you don’t already know?”

The chain the heavy bag hangs on rattles some more as Mikey beats it.

Raphael’s eyes travel up and down Mikey’s body, taking note not of his form but of the tension in his muscles. All of a sudden, he remembers the days he and his brothers spent at April’s farmhouse after the Foot Clan almost killed him. When they didn’t know if Master Splinter was dead or alive or where Shredder was keeping him. Once Raphael woke up from his coma, Mikey was better than he had been but still too quiet. And he spent a lot of time in the barn, hitting the punching bag there until he was too tired to lift his arms.

“I don’t care what you say,” Raphael tells his brother. “Just talk. I’ll listen.”

Mikey drums the heavy bag with a series of upper cuts, followed by a series of left and right hooks that turn into progressively weakening left hooks. When he finally drops his arm, Mikey slumps on his feet, his shoulders sagging, his back still to Raphael.

He turns around, and he’s crying, tear tracks in his orange mask. “I’m just so fucking angry,” he says. “We got those women away from the pimps, but we were still too late. They’re already hurt. And nothing we did to those guys, nothing that we could do now, is going to fix it. Part of me wishes we had killed all the men in there. I want to just go out there and kill them all, and even if I could, it still wouldn’t take away the victims’ pain. I’m so fucking pissed off, Raph, and I don’t know what to do.”

Mikey sniffs, not even trying to wipe his face, tears streaming over his cheeks and dripping onto the floor. His expression is one of pure anguish.

Raphael stands up and pulls Mikey into his arms. Mikey doesn’t resist, leaning into his brother with his face buried in Raph’s shoulder. Raphael lets him cry for a minute, feels Mikey’s body tremble against him and Mikey’s tears wetting his skin.

“You take that anger and you use it,” Raphael says softly, his voice lowered. “You use it every time we go out there on a job. You use it to stay motivated to be the best ninja you can be. And when you can’t take it anymore, you meditate or you come to me or Don or Leo and ask for a distraction.”

Mikey turns his head on Raph’s shoulder to face away from Raph’s neck. He holds onto his brother, his anger now giving way to despair and exhaustion. He sniffs but doesn’t sob.

“Do you want to stop?” Raph asks, already knowing the answer.

“No,” says Mikey, his voice water-logged.

“Okay, then. Take my advice.”

Mikey rests on his brother’s shoulder in silence, until Raphael gently starts to pull away. Raph takes his brother by the shoulders and looks at his face, at his mournful eyes. He cups Mikey’s cheeks in both hands.

“Whatever it is you’re feeling, tell me. Even if there’s nothing I can do about it, I want you to tell me.”

Mikey reaches up to rest his hand on Raph’s forearm. “Promise me you’ll tell me what you’re feeling, and you got a deal.”

Raph cracks a small smile. “All right.”


End file.
